Numerical Study Of The Targeted Energy Transfer Between The Euler-Bernoulli Beam And A Nonlinear Energy Sink

Targeted energy transfer (TET) refers to the spatial transfer of energy between a primary structure of interest and isolated oscillators called the energy sink (ES). In this work, the primary structure of interest is a slender beam modeled by the Euler-Bernoulli theory, and the ES is a single-degree-of-freedom oscillator with either linear or cubic nonlinear stiffness property. The objective of this study is to characterize the TET and the effectiveness of ES under impact and periodic excitations. By using the scientific computation package, MATLAB, numerical simulations are carried out based on excitations of various strength and locations. Both time and frequency domain characterizations are used. For the impact excitation, the ES with the cubic nonlinear stiffness property is more superior to the linear oscillator in that larger percentage of the impact energy can be dissipated there. The main energy transfer was found to be due to a 3- to-1 frequency coupling between the first bending mode and the ES. For the periodic excitation, however, both linear and nonlinear ES exhibit generally poorer performance than the case with the impact excitation. Future works should focus on the frequency-energy relationship of the periodic solution of the underlying Hamiltonian, as well as using finite element model to verify the simulation results.