Bio-inspired anti-vibration with nonlinear inertia coupling

This paper presents a unique human body inspired passive vibration isolation system with a special coupled nonlinear inertia design. This human body inspired anti-vibration structure with nonlinear inertia consists of a compact X-shaped structure with a horizontally-installed spring system to simulate the functions of legs and muscles, and a compact rotational unit to mimic the arms swinging (or upper body movement) and/or muscle extension-flexion motion during human walking. It is particularly focused on the beneficial nonlinear effect incurred by the rotational unit, including a nonlinear equivalent mass and a very special nonlinear inertia incurred conservative force. It is shown that, the nonlinear properties (in equivalent stiffness, damping and mass simultaneously) can obviously improve the vibration isolation at low frequencies and/or in a broadband frequency range, and increase the stability of the mass center of the overall isolation system during vibration, irrespective of the loading and excitation conditions. The muscle function and swinging arms of human body are for the first time employed with an innovative and simple mechanical design for vibration control and successfully validated by experimental prototypes for their excellent beneficial nonlinear features. This paper presents a unique simple passive and adjustable anti-vibration solution of great potential in extensive engineering applications. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.