Strongly nonlinear beats in the dynamics of an elastic system with a strong local stiffness nonlinearity: Analysis and identification

We consider a linear cantilever beam attached to ground through a strongly nonlinear stiffness at its free boundary, and study its dynamics computationally by the assumed-modes method. The nonlinear stiffness of this system has no linear component, so it is essentially nonlinear and nonlinearizable. We find that the strong nonlinearity mostly affects the lower-frequency bending modes and gives rise to strongly nonlinear beat phenomena. Analysis of these beats proves that they are caused by internal resonance interactions of nonlinear normal modes (NNMs) of the system. These internal resonances are not of the classical type since they occur between bending modes whose linearized natural frequencies are not necessarily related by rational ratios; rather, they are due to the strong energy-dependence of the frequency of oscillation of the corresponding NNMs of the beam (arising from the strong local stiffness nonlinearity) and occur at energy ranges where the frequencies of these NNMs are rationally related. Nonlinear effects start at a different energy level for each mode. Lower modes are influenced at lower energies due to larger modal displacements than higher modes and thus, at certain energy levels, the NNMs become rationally related, which results in internal resonance. The internal resonances of NNMs are studied using a reduced order model of the beam system. Then, a nonlinear system identification method is developed, capable of identifying this type of strongly nonlinear modal interactions. It is based on an adaptive step-by-step application of empirical mode decomposition (EMD) to the measured time series, which makes it valid for multi-frequency beating signals. Our work extends an earlier nonlinear system identification approach developed for nearly mono-frequency (monochromatic) signals. The extended system identification method is applied to the identification of the strongly nonlinear dynamics of the considered cantilever beam with the local strong nonlinear stiffness at its free end.     

分层半空间表面非线性瑞利波的激发*

针对非线性瑞利波在均匀分层半空间结构中的激发和传播规律进行研究。根据摄动理论和模态分解将分层半空间结构中瑞利波的二次谐波声场表示为二倍频瑞利波模式的线性组合,经由互易关系得到各模式的展开系数表达式。对不同分层半空间结构中瑞利波二次谐波的激发和传播特性进行讨论,结果表明相速度匹配的瑞利波模式其二次谐波分量随传播距离线性增长,非匹配模式的二次谐波分量则沿传播方向周期震荡传播。此外,文中定义非线性参数表征瑞利波模式产生的非线性程度,这有利于选择出具有明显非线性效应的匹配点,为后续检测工作提供理论依据,具有指导意义。     

System identification-guided basis selection for reduced-order nonlinear response analysis

Reduced-order nonlinear simulation is often times the only computationally efficient means of calculating the extended time response of large and complex structures under severe dynamic loading. This is because the structure may respond in a geometrically nonlinear manner, making the computational expense of direct numerical integration in physical degrees of freedom prohibitive. As for any type of modal reduction scheme, the quality of the reduced-order solution is dictated by the modal basis selection. The techniques for modal basis selection currently employed for nonlinear simulation are ad hoc and are strongly influenced by the analyst's subjective judgment. This work develops a reliable and rigorous procedure through which an efficient modal basis can be chosen. The method employs proper orthogonal decomposition to identify nonlinear system dynamics, and the modal assurance criterion to relate proper orthogonal modes to the normal modes that are eventually used as the basis functions. The method is successfully applied to the analysis of a planar beam and a shallow arch over a wide range of nonlinear dynamic response regimes. The error associated with the reduced-order simulation is quantified and related to the computational cost.     

Sliding window proper orthogonal decomposition: Application to linear and nonlinear modal identification

The Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method is a tool well adapted to analyze vector signals whereas Continuous Gabor Transform (CGT) is suitable for scalar signal with multi-frequency components. In this paper, a method named Sliding Window Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (SWPOD) combining POD and CGT to analyze Multi-Degrees-Of-Freedom (MDOF) vibration system responses is presented. SWPOD gives access to the evolution of the coherent spacial structures and their frequency components versus time. The method is of principal interest in the case of swept-sine excitation of linear or nonlinear systems to access the resonance frequencies, mode shapes and modal damping ratios. A procedure is proposed to extract the linear and nonlinear normal modes of weakly damped MDOF mechanical systems and illustrated using numerical examples.     

EFFECTS OF BASE POINTS AND NORMALIZATION SCHEMES ON THE NON-LINEAR NORMAL MODES OF CONSERVATIVE SYSTEMS

In this paper, two factors that affect the behaviors of the non-linear normal modes (NNMs) of conservative vibratory systems are investigated. The first factor is the base points (which are equivalent to Taylor series expanding points) of the non-linear normal modes and the second one is the normalization schemes of the corresponding linear modes. For non-linear systems, in general only the approximated NNM manifolds are obtainable in practice, so different base points may lead to different forms of NNM oscillators and different normalization schemes lead to different forward and backward transformations which in turn affect the numerical computation errors. Three different kinds of base points and two different normalization schemes are adopted for comparison respectively. Two examples of non-linear systems with two and three degrees of freedom, respectively, are given as illustration. Simulations for various cases are made. The analysis and the simulation results indicated that, the best base points are the abstract base points determined via the linear normal mode, which would eliminate the third order terms containing velocity (for cubic systems) or quadratic terms (for quadratic systems) in equations of the NNM oscillators. A better invariance of the NNMs would also be maintained with such base points. The best scheme of normalization is the norm-one scheme that would minimize the numerical errors.     

Modal reduction of mathematical models of biological molecules

This paper reports a detailed study of modal reduction based on either linear normal mode (LNM) analysis or proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) for modeling a single α-d-glucopyranose monomer as well as a chain of monomers attached to a moving atomic force microscope (AFM) under harmonic excitations. Also a modal reduction method combining POD and component modal synthesis is developed. The accuracy and efficiency of these methods are reported. The focus of this study is to determine to what extent these methods can reduce the time and cost of molecular modeling and simultaneously provide the required accuracy. It has been demonstrated that a linear reduced order model is valid for small amplitude excitation and low frequency excitation. It is found that a nonlinear reduced order model based on POD modes provides a good approximation even for large excitation while the nonlinear reduced order model using linear eigenmodes as the basis vectors is less effective for modeling molecules with a strong nonlinearity. The reduced order model based on component modal synthesis using POD modes for each component also gives a good approximation. With the reduction in the dimension of the system using these methods the computational time and cost can be reduced significantly.     

On the nonlinear normal modes of free vibration of piecewise linear systems

A modification of the Shaw–Pierre nonlinear normal modes is suggested in order to analyze the vibrations of a piecewise linear mechanical systems with finite degrees of freedom. The use of this approach allows one to reduce to twice the dimension of the nonlinear algebraic equations system for nonlinear normal modes calculations in comparison with systems obtained by previous researchers. Two degrees of freedom and fifteen degrees of freedom nonlinear dynamical systems are investigated numerically by using nonlinear normal modes.     

Experimental analysis of the linear and nonlinear behaviour of composites with delaminations

An analysis of the linear and nonlinear vibration responses of composites with delaminations is presented. The effect of delamination size on the linear and nonlinear vibration response is studied. The composite material used in this paper is a glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) having delaminations at the plies interfaces. The experimental procedure consists in inducing the specimen on its resonance flexural modes with different excitation levels (amplitudes) for six bending modes and for each delamination length. The presence of the nonlinearity introduced by the delamination was clearly identified by the variation of natural frequencies for increasing excitation levels. Then, nonlinear elastic parameters for progressive delamination length were determined and discussed for the first six bending modes. The linear and the nonlinear elastic parameters were compared in their sensitive modes.     

Analysis of nonlinear steady state vibration of a multi-degree-of-freedom system using component mode synthesis method

In this paper, an analytical approach for nonlinear forced vibration of a multi-degree-of-freedom system is proposed using the component mode synthesis method. The whole system is divided into some components and a nonlinear modal equation of each component is derived using the free-interface vibration modes. The modal equations of all components and the conjunction conditions are solved simultaneously, and then the modal responses of components are derived. Finally, the dynamic responses of the whole system can be obtained. The degrees of freedom of modal equations can be reduced when the lower vibration modes are only adopted in each component. As a numerical example, a nine-degree-of-freedom system is considered, in which all spring have cubic type nonlinearity. As a result, it is shown that when there are no rigid modes in components, the compliance by the proposed method agrees very well with the exact one even if the lower vibration modes of components are only adopted. The other hand, in the case with rigid modes in components, the compliance has a little error compared with the exact result. It is recognized that the method proposed is very effective in the case without rigid modes in components for the actual application.     

Bilinear modal representations for reduced-order modeling of localized piecewise-linear oscillators

A novel reduced-order modeling method for vibration problems of elastic structures with localized piecewise-linearity is proposed. The focus is placed upon solving nonlinear forced response problems of elastic media with contact nonlinearity, such as cracked structures and delaminated plates. The modeling framework is based on observations of the proper orthogonal modes computed from nonlinear forced responses and their approximation by a truncated set of linear normal modes with special boundary conditions. First, it is shown that a set of proper orthogonal modes can form a good basis for constructing a reduced-order model that can well capture the nonlinear normal modes. Next, it is shown that the subspace spanned by the set of dominant proper orthogonal modes can be well approximated by a slightly larger set of linear normal modes with special boundary conditions. These linear modes are referred to as bi-linear modes, and are selected by an elaborate methodology which utilizes certain similarities between the bi-linear modes and approximations for the dominant proper orthogonal modes. These approximations are obtained using interpolated proper orthogonal modes of smaller dimensional models. The proposed method is compared with traditional reduced-order modeling methods such as component mode synthesis, and its advantages are discussed. Forced response analyses of cracked structures and delaminated plates are provided for demonstrating the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed methodology.     

Response features of nonlinear circumferential guided wave on early damage in inner layer of a composite circular tube

A theoretical model to analyze the nonlinear circumferential guided wave(CGW) propagation in a composite circular tube(CCT) is established. The response features of nonlinear CGWs to early damage [denoted by variations in third-order elastic constants(TOECs)] in an inner layer of CCT are investigated. On the basis of the modal expansion approach, the second-harmonic field of primary CGW propagation can be assumed to be a linear sum of a series of double-frequency CGW(DFCGW) modes. The quantitative relationship of DFCGW mode versus the relative changes in the inner layer TOECs is then investigated. It is found that the changes in the inner layer TOECs of CCT will obviously affect the driving source of DFCGW mode and its modal expansion coefficient, which is intrinsically able to influence the efficiency of cumulative second-harmonic generation(SHG) by primary CGW propagation. Theoretical analyses and numerical simulations demonstrate that the second harmonic of primary CGW is monotonic and very sensitive to the changes in the inner layer TOECs of CCT, while the linear properties of primary CGW propagation almost remain unchanged. Our results provide a potential application for accurately characterizing the level of early damage in the inner layer of CCT through the efficiency of cumulative SHG by primary CGW propagation.     

Linear and nonlinear 2D finite element analysis of sloshing modes and pressures in rectangular tanks subject to horizontal harmonic motions

The influence of nonlinear wave theory on the sloshing natural periods and their modal pressure distributions are investigated for rectangular tanks under the assumption of two-dimensional behavior. Natural periods and mode shapes are computed and compared for both linear wave theory (LWT) and nonlinear wave theory (NLWT) models, using the finite element package ABAQUS. Linear wave theory is implemented in an acoustic model, whereas a plane strain problem with large displacements is used in NLWT. Pressure distributions acting on the tank walls are obtained for the first three sloshing modes using both linear and nonlinear wave theory. It is found that the nonlinearity does not have significant effects on the natural sloshing periods. For the sloshing pressures on the tank walls, different distributions were found using linear and nonlinear wave theory models. However, in all cases studied, the linear wave theory conservatively estimated the magnitude of the pressure distribution, whereas larger pressures resultant heights were obtained when using the nonlinear theory. It is concluded that the nonlinearity of the surface wave does not have major effects in the pressure distribution on the walls for rectangular tanks.     

Vibration analog of a superradiant quantum transition

A vibrational analog of the superradiant quantum transition (SQT) in a classical system of weakly bound oscillators of van der Pole-Duffing (self-generators), in which the coupling element is a linear oscillator, is described. Such an analog is a strongly modulated oscillatory process of almost complete periodic energy exchange between the generators. This type of mode is alternative to nonlinear normal modes (NNM) and close in its character to limiting phase trajectories (LPTs), which have been introduced recently as applied to conservative systems, but in contrast to them, as the attractor. It is shown that the necessary condition of the transition to intense energy exchange in the classical system is the instability of one of the NNMs similarly to that when the condition of the superradiant transition is the instability of the ground state in a quantum model.     

A modal disturbance estimator for vibration suppression in nonlinear flexible structures

This paper presents a control strategy for the suppression of vibration due to unknown disturbance forces in large, nonlinear flexible structures. The control action proposed, based on the modal approach, consists of two contributions. The first is the well-known Independent Modal-Space Control, which increases system damping and improves its behavior close to the resonance frequencies. The second is a disturbance estimator, which calculates the modal components of the external forces acting on the system and compensates for them using actuator forces. The system modal coordinates, required by both logics, are estimated through a modal state observer.The proposed control logic is tested on a flexible boom. The paper reports the numerical and experimental results both for the linear and nonlinear (large motion) boom configuration.     

The decoupling of damped linear systems in free or forced vibration

The purpose of this paper is to extend classical modal analysis to decouple any viscously damped linear system in non-oscillatory free vibration or in forced vibration. Based upon an exposition of how exponential decay in a system can be regarded as imaginary oscillations, the concept of damped modes of imaginary vibration is introduced. By phase synchronization of these real and physically excitable modes, a time-varying transformation is constructed to decouple non-oscillatory free vibration. When time drifts caused by viscous damping and by external excitation are both accounted for, a time-varying decoupling transformation for forced vibration is derived. The decoupling procedure devised herein reduces to classical modal analysis for systems that are undamped or classically damped. This paper constitutes the second and final part of a solution to the “classical decoupling problem.” Together with an earlier paper, a general methodology that requires only the solution of a quadratic eigenvalue problem is developed to decouple any damped linear system.     

A new formulation for the existence and calculation of nonlinear normal modes

A new formulation is presented here for the existence and calculation of nonlinear normal modes in undamped nonlinear autonomous mechanical systems. As in the linear case an expression is developed for the mode in terms of the amplitude, mode shape and frequency, with the distinctive feature that the last two quantities are amplitude and total phase dependent. The dynamic of the periodic response is defined by a one-dimensional nonlinear differential equation governing the total phase motion. The period of the oscillations, depending only on the amplitude, is easily deduced. It is established that the frequency and the mode shape provide the solution to a 2π-periodic nonlinear eigenvalue problem, from which a numerical Galerkin procedure is developed for approximating the nonlinear modes. The procedure is applied to various mechanical systems with two degrees of freedom.     

Tamm states and nonlinear surface modes in photonic crystals

We predict the existence of surface gap modes, known as Tamm states for electronic systems, in truncated photonic crystals formed by two types of dielectric rods. We investigate the energy threshold, dispersion, and modal symmetries of the surface modes, and also demonstrate the existence and tunability of nonlinear Tamm states in binary photonic crystals with nonlinear response.     

Perfectly matched layers for coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with mixed derivatives

This paper constructs perfectly matched layers (PML) for a system of 2D coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with mixed derivatives which arises in the modeling of gap solitons in nonlinear periodic structures with a non-separable linear part. The PML construction is performed in Laplace–Fourier space via a modal analysis and can be viewed as a complex change of variables. The mixed derivatives cause the presence of waves with opposite phase and group velocities, which has previously been shown to cause instability of layer equations in certain types of hyperbolic problems. Nevertheless, here the PML is stable if the absorption function σ$\sigma$ lies below a specified threshold. The PML construction and analysis are carried out for the linear part of the system. Numerical tests are then performed in both the linear and nonlinear regimes checking convergence of the error with respect to the layer width and showing that the PML performs well even in many nonlinear simulations.     

圆管结构中周向导波非线性效应的模式展开分析

在二阶微扰近似条件下, 采用导波模式展开分析方法研究了圆管结构中周向导波的非线性效应. 伴随基频周向导波传播所发生的二次谐波, 可视为由一系列二倍频周向导波模式叠加而成. 从动量定理出发, 结合柱坐标系下非线性应力张量及其散度的数学表达式, 针对圆管中某一基频周向导波模式, 推导出相应的二倍频应力张量及二倍频彻体驱动力的数学表达式, 建立了确定二倍频周向导波模式展开系数的控制方程, 得到了伴随基频周向导波传播所发生的二次谐波声场的形式解. 理论分析和数值计算表明, 当构成二次谐波声场的某一二倍频周向导波模式与基频周向导波的相速度匹配时, 该二倍频周向导波模式的位移振幅表现出随传播周向角积累增长的性质; 当两者的相速度失配时, 二倍频周向导波的振幅随传播周向角表现出“拍”效应.