A Theoretical and Experimental Implementation of a Control Method Based on Saturation

A novel approach for implementing an active nonlinear vibration absorber is presented. The absorber, which is built in electronic circuitry, takes advantage of the saturation phenomenon that occurs when two natural frequencies of a system with quadratic nonlinearities are in the ratio of two-to-one. When the system is excited at a frequency near the higher natural frequency, there is a small ceiling for the system response at the higher frequency and the rest of the input energy is channeled to the low-frequency mode.A working model of using saturation to suppress the vibrations of a rigid beam connected to a DC motor has been built. An electronic oscillator is built, and its frequency is set at one-half the frequency of the beam. The output from a sensor on the beam is multiplied by the output from the electronic oscillator and a suitable gain, and the result is used as the forcing term for the oscillator. At the same time, the output from the oscillator is squared and multiplied by a suitable gain, and that result is used as the input to the motor. The oscillator/actuator and the beam act as the two modes of a two-degree-of-freedom quadratically coupled system with a 2:1 autoparametric resonance. When the beam is excited by a harmonic force, its motion quickly becomes saturated, and most of the energy imparted to the beam by the harmonic force is transferred to the electronic circuit and from there to the actuator. Thus, the harmonic force is made to work against itself. As a result, the motion of the beam always remains small.