Effectiveness of vibro-impact nonlinear energy sinks for vibration suppression of beams under traveling loads

Effective control of traveling-load-induced vibrations is a challenging issue of special significance in various engineering fields such as railways, bridges, cable systems, etc. Traditional passive strategies that rely on tuned mass dampers are effective over only a narrow traveling velocity range, thus cannot meet the broadband requirement for such problems. In this paper, a nonlinear device termed as vibro-impact nonlinear energy sink (VINES), that including a light-weight mass moving in-between the clearance of the primary structure, is proposed as a mean for the broadband control of vibrations induced by traveling loads. To do this, we considered a coupled system consisting of a beam as a host structure under traveling loads, and coupled to a set of VINESs. The system is modeled in a dimensionless formula in order to gain generalized results, and the vibro-impact dynamics is solved from a measure differential complementarity problem that is given by Signorini's contact law. Comprehensive analyses are then conducted to investigate the vibration reduction potential of the VINES regarding the underlying nonlinear mechanisms, parametric effects, as well as robustness concerns. It is found that effective vibration reduction could be achieved by adding a simple VINES with a total mass around 10% of the host beam. Moreover, such a simple strategy shows an excellent broadband property to suppress multiple peaks, as well as a desirable robustness to perform well under excitation uncertainty and different traveling conditions.