A robust equal-peak method for uncertain mechanical systems

The linear vibration absorber is a widely-used vibration mitigation device. However, when the absorber is tuned according to Den Hartog's equal-peak method, the resulting narrow bandwidth may decrease its effectiveness, especially when the host structure is uncertain or in the presence of environmental variability. In this paper, a new tuning strategy of the linear absorber, based on the concept of robust equal peaks, is introduced for mitigating a specific resonance of an uncertain mechanical system. Both analytical and numerical investigations are carried out to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed absorber. For 20% uncertainty in the stiffness of the host system, the performance improvement brought by the robust equal-peak method amounts to more than 30% with respect to Den Hartog's tuning rule. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.