RESONANCE IN IMPACT PROBLEMS

This article is motivated by an engineering problem: given a mechanica l system with some amount of looseness, is it possible to identify thi s looseness using; only dynamical testing? Such a possibility would pe rmit automated testing, frequent and cheap monitoring, and would be pa rticularly useful in hostile environments. To understand this question , we considered a model of the following mechanical setup (see Figure 1). A U-shaped mobile part is joined to a massive solid support by a l inear elastic spring and a damper; the mobile part is submitted to a s inusoidal excitation. It is assumed that the motion is one dimensional . (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.