Experimental evaluation of a vibro-impact model for two adjacent shear-building structures

Abstract

The vibro-impact phenomenon is found in many engineering applications, from impact of floating ice with ships to rubbing between the stator structure and rotor blades in turbomachinery, and in most cases it is important to know the implication of this phenomenon in the mechanical system. This is often done by proposing vibro-impact models for describing the behavior of the system when subjected to periodically impacts. However, this modelling may be challenging due to the strongly nonlinear characteristics of the impact phenomenon. Therefore, this paper presents a vibro-impact model of two shearbuilding structures positioned side by side, where one of them is driven by an unbalanced DC motor. The structures were modeled using the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and the contact was modeled based on the Hertz contact theory. In order to validate the model their responses were compared with experimental signals.