A new Hysteretic Nonlinear Energy Sink (HNES)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel Hysteretic Nonlinear Energy Sink (HNES) with unique hysteretic and negative stiffness springs, demonstrating superior shock mitigation performance through numerical analysis of energy dissipation.

Contribution

The paper presents a new HNES design with hysteretic and negative stiffness elements, modeled with Bouc-Wen, and analyzes its effectiveness in energy dissipation during shocks.

Findings

HNES effectively dissipates energy over a wide range of initial energies.

Negative stiffness springs enhance the HNES performance.

Numerical simulations confirm significant energy transfer and dissipation.

Abstract

The behavior of a new Hysteretic Nonlinear Energy Sink (HNES) coupled to a linear primary oscillator is investigated in shock mitigation. Apart from a small mass and a nonlinear elastic spring of the Duffing oscillator, the HNES is also comprised of a purely hysteretic and a linear elastic spring of potentially negative stiffness, connected in parallel. The Bouc-Wen model is used to describe the force produced by both the purely hysteretic and linear elastic springs. Coupling the primary oscillator with the HNES three nonlinear equations of motion are derived, in terms of the two displacements and the dimensionless hysteretic variable, which are integrated numerically using the analog equation method. The performance of the HNES is examined by quantifying the percentage of the initially induced energy in the primary system that is passively transferred and dissipated by the HNES. Remarkable results are achieved for a wide range of initial input energies. The great performance of the HNES is mostly evidenced when the linear spring stiffness takes on negative values.