Forced vibrations of oscillators with a purely nonlinear power-form restoring force

Harmonically excited oscillators with non-negative real-power geometric nonlinearities and no linear term in the restoring force are considered. Perturbation approaches are developed for the cases of weak and strong nonlinearity. Frequency-amplitude equations are derived for an arbitrary value of the non-negative real power of the restoring force as well as analytical expressions for the steady-state response at the frequency of excitation. It is shown that the system response is of a softening type for the powers lower than unity and of a hardening type for the powers higher than unity. Frequency-response curves of the antisymmetric (constant force) oscillator, the restoring force of which has a zero power, are also discussed. Comparisons with numerical results are presented for confirmation of the analytical results obtained.