Nonlinear dynamic vibration absorbers with a saturation

The behavior of a new type of nonlinear dynamic vibration absorber is studied. A distinctive characteristic of the proposed absorber is the impossibility to extend the system to infinity. The mathematical formulation is based on a finite extensibility nonlinear elastic potential to model the saturable nonlinearity. The absorber is attached to a single degree-of-freedom linear/nonlinear oscillator subjected to a periodic external excitation. In order to solve the equations of motion and to analyze the frequency-response curves, the method of averaging is used. The performance of the FENE absorber is evaluated considering a variation of the nonlinearity of the primary system, the damping and the linearized frequency of the absorber and the mass ratio. The numerical results show that the proposed absorber has a very good efficiency when the nonlinearity of the primary system increases. When compared with a cubic nonlinear absorber, for a large nonlinearity of the primary system, the FENE absorber shows a better effectiveness for the whole studied frequency range. A complete absence of quasi-periodic oscillations is also found for an appropriate selection of the parameters of the absorber. Finally, direct integrations of the equations of motion are performed to verify the accuracy of the proposed method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.