A Variant Nonlinear Energy Sink for Vibration Suppression and Energy Harvesting

In this paper a variant nonlinear energy sink (NES) is developed for the purpose of simultaneous vibration suppression and energy harvesting in a broad frequency band. The NES consists of a cantilever beam attached by a mass at its free end and a pair of so-called double-stop blocks. The beam is formed by a piezoelectric energy harvester and a thin steel plate. It is placed between the double-stop blocks. The constraint of the double-stop blocks forces the beam to deflect nonlinearly. First, the developed apparatus is described. Subsequently, system modeling and parameter identification are addressed. The performance of the apparatus under transient responses is examined through both numerical simulation and experimental study. The results show that the proposed apparatus behaves similarly as the NES with the following features: 1:1 resonance, targeted energy transfer, initial energy dependence, etc.