Nonlinear passive control of a pendulum submitted to base excitations (Q2234203)

The authors consider the behavior of a simple mechanical structure to evaluate the effects of vibrations arising from natural sources. Such vibrations in real mechanical systems can be damaging or destructive if not controlled. Consequently, there is significant interest in passive control of vibration. In this paper they describe a simple single-degree-of-freedom pendulum with a nonlinear absorber and compare its performance with a undamped pendulum for a variety of excitation parameters. The authors specifically consider only vertical and horizontal excitations of the base of the pendulum, and they focus on passive control of the resulting motion. The first analysis examines the dynamics without any compensatory passive damping. The authors assume that the excitations are periodic with their frequencies varying, but in the vicinity of the natural pendulum frequency. Their results show that horizontal excitation of the base of the pendulum has the same effect as external horizontal excitation. They develop Poincaré maps of the system, identify numerical equilibrium points, and then compare them with analytic predictions. A notable result is that -- without a coupled nonlinear absorber -- the parametric vertical excitation can have equilibrium points with large amplitudes, and that an absorber can effectively create a barrier preventing access to these equilibrium points. With combined horizontal and vertical excitations of the base of the pendulum the situation is more complex, but the barrier still exists. The authors offer techniques and design tools for tuning properties of the absorber to control pendulum vibrations arising from external and base excitations.