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A compact nonlinear stiffness-modulated structure for low-frequency vibration isolation under heavy loads

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Abstract

Nonlinear quasi-zero stiffness (QZS) has recently attracted significant attention from the scientific and engineering community as a method for designing low-frequency vibration isolators. However, previous studies primarily used bistable structures and linear springs to provide negative and positive stiffness, respectively, which limits the QZS range and loading capacity of QZS isolators. This work proposes a novel nonlinear stiffness-modulated anti-vibration structure combined with a disc spring group and a volute spring and demonstrates its feasibility for low-frequency vibration isolation under heavy loads. The asymmetrical negative stiffness provided by the disc spring group and hardened positive stiffness provided by the volute spring compensate each other to construct QZS characteristics. Their nonlinearities can weaken each other, which can lead to a wide QZS range. At the QZS position, the disc springs and the volute spring together provide the positive force, which ensures a large loading capacity. By adjusting the design parameters, different QZS characteristics can be conveniently realized. Compared with traditional QZS structures and typical X-shaped structures, the QZS range of the proposed anti-vibration structure can be, respectively, extended by 2.3 and 1.5 times without sacrificing loading capacity. The dynamic equation is derived from the original nonlinear force expression rather than the typical polynomial approximation expression, which can improve the accuracy of the results, especially under large excitation. The displacement transmissibility obtained by the alternating frequency–time harmonic balance method indicates that the proposed anti-vibration structure exhibits the best vibration isolation performance compared with the linear isolators, traditional QZS isolators, and typical X-shaped isolators. In addition, such a stiffness-modulated anti-vibration structure has a higher sensitivity to damping and a lower sensitivity to base excitation amplitude, which makes it more potential for engineering applications. Besides, the validity of the theoretical analysis is verified by static compression tests and dynamic experiments. This work provides a new method for designing and analysing QZS isolators for heavy-duty low-frequency vibration isolation required in many engineering practices.

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Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52275092).

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  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

    Kangfan Yu, Yunwei Chen, Chuanyun Yu, Jianrun Zhang & Xi Lu

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  1. Kangfan Yu
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Kangfan Yu, Yunwei Chen and Chuanyun Yu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Kangfan Yu, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianrun Zhang.

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Kangfan Yu, Yunwei Chen, Chuanyun Yu, Jianrun Zhang and Xi Lu declare that they have no conflict of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

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Yu, K., Chen, Y., Yu, C. et al. A compact nonlinear stiffness-modulated structure for low-frequency vibration isolation under heavy loads. Nonlinear Dyn 112, 5863–5893 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-024-09334-z

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