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The paper deals with designing a control force to create nodal point(s) having zero displacements and/or zero slopes at selected locations in a harmonically excited vibrating structure. It is shown that the steady-state vibrations at desired points can be eliminated using feedback control forces. These control forces are constructed from displacement and/or velocity measurements using sensors located either at the control force position or at some other locations. Dynamic Green's function is exploited to derive a simple and exact closed from expression for the control force. Under a certain condition, this control force can be generated using passive elements such as springs and dampers. Numerical examples demonstrate the applicability of the method in various cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the dynamic behavior of laminated plates with nonlinear elastic restraints, a varied constraint force model and a systematic numerical procedure are presented in this work. Several kinds of typical relationships of force-displacement for spring are established to simulate the nonlinear elastic restraints. In addition, considering the restraining moments of flexible pads, the pads are modeled by translational and rotational springs. The displacement- dependent constraint forces are added to the right-hand side of equations of motion and treated as additional applied loads. These loads can be explicitly defined, via an independent set of nonlinear load functions. The time histories of transverse displacements at typical points of the laminated plate are obtained through the transient analysis. Numerical examples show that the present method can effectively treat the geometrically nonlinear transient response of plates with nonlinear elastic restraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposed a method used to analyze the motion of hammer-driven type penetrators and built a testbed for validating the result of structure optimization of the penetrator in deep space exploration. This method gave a clear understanding of the working principle of the penetrator. The penetrator mainly comprises five components: hammer element, suppressor element, housing element, brake spring, and force spring. Based on the structure of the penetrator, the maximum forward movement of housing element was chosen as optimal object. In order to describe the working process clearly and properly, the working stroke was divided into three phases: unlocking phase, colliding phase, and penetrating phase. In each phase, the displacement and velocity of hammer element, suppressor element, and housing element were described with equation sets when numerically solved. Then, the corresponding parameters of the penetrator were obtained in the testbed with high-speed camera. At last, comparing the parameters obtained by theoretical analysis with that obtained by experiment test with high-speed camera, the perfect ratio of mass element (hammer element, suppressor element, and housing element) and perfect ratio of stiffness of spring element (brake spring and force spring) were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nonlinear dynamical equations of tilted support spring packaging system with critical components were obtained under the action of half-sine pulse. To evaluate the shock characteristics of the critical components, a new concept of three-dimensional shock response spectrum was proposed. The ratio of the maximum shock response acceleration of the critical components to the peak pulse acceleration, the dimensionless pulse duration, and the frequency parameter ratio of system or the angle of tilted support spring system were three basic parameters of the three-dimensional shock response spectrum. Based on the numerical results, the effects of the peak pulse acceleration, the angle of the tilted support spring, the frequency parameter ratio, and the mass ratio on the shock response spectrum were discussed. It is shown that the effects of the angle of the tilted support spring and the frequency ratio on the shock response spectrum are particularly noticeable, increasing frequency parameter ratio of the system can obviously decrease the maximum shock response acceleration of the critical components, and the peak of the shock response of the critical components can be decreased at low frequency ratio by increasing mass ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposed a novel hybrid dynamic balancer and vibration absorber that is cheaper than active dampers and more effective than passive dampers. The proposed damping system does not need to be altered structurally to deal with different damping targets. Rather, the proposed vibration absorber is capable of self-adjustment to the optimal damping location in order to achieve balance and, thereby, optimize damping effects. The proposed device includes a groove under the damping target with inertial mass hung from a coil spring beneath. This allows the device to bounce vertically or rotate in order to reduce vibrations in the main body. The coil spring vibration absorber can also slide along the groove in order to adjust its location continuously until the vibrations in the system are minimized and the main body is balanced. Experiments verify the efficacy of the proposed device in improving damping performance beyond what has been achieved using conventional devices. We also provide an explanation of the theoretical underpinnings of the design as well as the implications of these findings with regard to future developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A limit state function is developed for the estimation of structural reliability in shock environments. This limit state function uses peak modal strain energies to characterize environmental severity and modal strain energies at failure to characterize the structural capacity. The Hasofer-Lind reliability index is briefly reviewed and its computation for the energy-based limit state function is discussed. Applications to two degree of freedom mass-spring systems and to a simple finite element model are considered. For these examples, computation of the reliability index requires little effort beyond a modal analysis, but still accounts for relevant uncertainties in both the structure and environment. For both examples, the reliability index is observed to agree well with the results of Monte Carlo analysis. In situations where fast, qualitative comparison of several candidate designs is required, the reliability index based on the proposed limit state function provides an attractive metric which can be used to compare and control reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-deploying structures seek to provide a compact launch package for large, lightweight satellite booms. One self-deploying method is a foldable tape spring. This paper examines the large scale behavior of a boom attached by a tape spring hinge during mock deployments. A boom attached by tape spring to a rigid stand was released and the boom bounced up to 60° before coming to rest (as opposed to snap-through behavior). These large amplitude bounces can cause the boom to collide with sensors, other booms or arrays causing damage or preventing full deployment. Results show the first bounce of deployment is nearly bounded by a four parameter ellipse. The ellipses of similar folds are similar also, suggesting that a model can be developed. Free-fall tests simulating the free-free condition found in microgravity also show similar elliptical motion. Envelopes that bound the extents of the boom motion allow for collisions to be prevented by adjustment of the design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the modeling of dynamical systems, uncertainties are present and they must be taken into account to improve the prediction of the models. Some strategies have been used to model uncertainties and the aim of this work is to discuss two of those strategies and to compare them. This will be done using the simplest model possible: a two d.o.f. (degrees of freedom) dynamical system. A simple system is used because it is very helpful to assure a better understanding and, consequently, comparison of the strategies. The first strategy (called parametric strategy) consists in taking each spring stiffness as uncertain and a random variable is associated to each one of them. The second strategy (called nonparametric strategy) is more general and considers the whole stiffness matrix as uncertain, and associates a random matrix to it. In both cases, the probability density functions either of the random parameters or of the random matrix are deduced from the Maximum Entropy Principle using only the available information. With this example, some important results can be discussed, which cannot be assessed when complex structures are used, as it has been done so far in the literature. One important element for the comparison of the two strategies is the analysis of the samples spaces and the how to compare them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural vibration analysis is used to suppress unwanted vibrations in many areas such as aerospace engineering, manufacturing, defense, automotive, etc. As a result of suppressing the unwanted vibration, the quality of the product is improved. Focusing on the minimization of the vibration amplitudes via a concept of receptance, a new and efficient method for calculating the receptance of a translational mass-spring-damper system with N masses and M absorbers (where N and M are any positive integer) is developed. The receptance of the combined system, in terms of the parameters of the main and absorber systems is derived, separately. The optimal parameters of the absorbers are then found. A methodology is derived using dynamic stiffness and linear graph representation in order to verify the dynamic stiffness, i.e., the inverse of the receptance, of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]