Energy Transfer and Dissipation in Combined-Stiffness Nonlinear Energy Sink Systems

Abstract Nonlinear energy sinks (NES) are highly efficient vibration energy absorption and dissipation devices, and play an important vibration-suppression role in many types of structures. In this study, the influence of parameters on the combined stiffness nonlinear energy sink system is revealed from the perspective of energy, in which combined-stiffness terms are composed of piecewise linear stiffness and cubic stiffness. First, the slow-varying derivative of the combined-stiffness nonlinear energy sink system is calculated based on the complexification-averaging and multiscale methods. Second, an approximate expression for the extreme points on the slow-invariant manifold (SIM) of the system is derived by polynomial approximation, and the energy dissipation equation of the combined-stiffness nonlinear energy sink system is derived. The impacts of the stiffness gap, piecewise linear stiffness coefficient, and cubic stiffness coefficient on the system are analyzed by studying the energy transfer efficiency equation. Additionally, the relationship between the damping ratio of the primary structure and the dissipation time is analyzed.