ON IMPACT DAMPERS FOR NONLINEAR VIBRATING SYSTEMS

The performance of an impact damper for controlling the vibration of a harmonically excited, hard Duffing's oscillator is investigated. Both elastic and inelastic collisions are considered. The optimum design i s based around a low amplitude, stable solution predicted by the harmo nic balance method. The final design is obtained and verified by numer ical integration. Also, the use of an impact damper as an on-off migra tion controller for a guided transition from the resonance to the non- resonance branch of the solution is proposed. This scheme obviates the need of continuous, noisy operation of an impact damper. (C) 1995 Aca demic Press Limited