Abstract
Engineering systems naturally vibrate, and the reduction of the associated oscillations is crucial to increase lifespan, energy efficiency, and performance. To that end, many vibration attenuation strategies have been proposed and implemented in, for example, buildings, automotive systems, and aerospace applications. The majority of existing vibration attenuation schemes are based on well-developed linear systems theory. However, these schemes are not applicable to systems that exhibit nonlinear behavior. Furthermore, with linear approaches, one fails to leverage the potential of nonlinearities, which are invariably present in many applications. In this article, a beneficial interplay between nonlinearity and noise is utilized to reduce vibration amplitudes. More specifically, the sensitivity of high amplitude nonlinear responses is leveraged. Through noise addition, the response is steered away from high amplitude vibrations to low amplitude vibrations. Hence, the vibration amplitudes associated with a resonance are effectively reduced. Experiments and simulations confirm the efficiency and universality of the proposed strategy. It is shown that the observed vibration attenuation is robust with respect to parameter changes, responses associated with multiple resonances can be effected with one, single scheme, and one can utilize various noise sources in this scheme. Overall, the maximal amplitude is reduced by about 50 %.
