On impact dampers for non-linear vibrating systems

Abstract

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 is based around a low amplitude, stable solution predicted by the harmonic balance method. The final design is obtained and verified by numerical integration. Also, the use of an impact damper as an on-off migration 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.