Vibration absorption of parallel-coupled nonlinear energy sink under shock and harmonic excitations

Abstract

Nonlinear energy sink (NES) can passively absorb broadband energy from primary oscillators. Proper multiple NESs connected in parallel exhibit superior performance to single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) NESs. In this work, a linear coupling spring is installed between two parallel NESs so as to expand the application scope of such vibration absorbers. The vibration absorption of the parallel and parallel-coupled NESs and the system response induced by the coupling spring are studied. The results show that the responses of the system exhibit a significant difference when the heavier cubic oscillators in the NESs have lower stiffness and the lighter cubic oscillators have higher stiffness. Moreover, the e±ciency of the parallel-coupled NES is higher for medium shocks but lower for small and large shocks than that of the parallel NESs. The parallel-coupled NES also shows superior performance for medium harmonic excitations until higher response branches are induced. The performance of the parallel-coupled NES and the SDOF NES is compared. It is found that, regardless of the chosen SDOF NES parameters, the performance of the parallel-coupled NES is similar or superior to that of the SDOF NES in the entire force range.