A Re-Configurable Test Apparatus for Complex Nonlinear Dynamic Systems

This paper reports the results of an analytical and experimental study to design, analyze, construct, test, and evaluate a re-configurable test-bed to allow the convenient performance of sophisticated experiments in a laboratory setting for investigating a broad category of important nonlinear, time-varying phenomena that are widely encountered in the applied mechanics field. The essential elements of the test apparatus include an electro-dynamic exciter that drives an oscillating mass whose restoring force is easily adjustable from one resembling a linear SDOF mass-spring-damper system with constant coefficients, to one that can represent systems with nonlinear elastic forces, to one that models systems possessing hysteretic properties with precisely-controlled time-varying characteristics. The apparatus design is economical to fabricate, convenient to manipulate, and it provides results that can be accurately replicated under repeated test combinations of system parameters and dynamic loads. The utility of the apparatus to provide an investigational tool for studying the dynamic response of systems with time-varying dry-friction forces that give rise to hysteretic phenomena is demonstrated. Sophisticated on-line system-identification techniques are used to estimate the parameters of reduced-order models that capture the dominant features of the physical model. It is shown that the apparatus under discussion is a useful research tool for investigators conducting studies in physics-based models of generic nonlinear dynamic systems.