A Non-Traditional Variant Nonlinear Energy Sink: Transient Responses

In this paper, a non-traditional variant nonlinear energy sink (NES) is developed for simultaneous vibration suppression and energy harvesting in a broad frequency band. The non-traditional variant NES consists of a cantilever beam attached by a pair of magnets at its free end, a pair of the so-called continuous-contact blocks, and a pair of coils. The beam is placed between the continuous-contact blocks. The constraint of the continuous-contact blocks forces the beam to deflect nonlinearly. Each of the magnet-coil pairs forms an electromagnetic energy harvester. Different from a traditional way that attaches the coils to the primary mass, the developed setup has the coils fixed to the base. First, the developed apparatus is described. Subsequently, the system modeling and parameter identification are addressed. The performance of the apparatus under transient responses is examined by using computer simulation. The results show that the proposed apparatus behaves similarly as the NES with the following features: 1:1 resonance, targeted energy transfer, initial energy dependence, etc.