Chaotic Response of a Hard Duffing Type Vibration Isolator With Combined Coulomb and Viscous Damping

Abstract Numerical simulations of the response of a harmonically excited mass on an isolator with a cubic, hard, non-linear restoring force and combined Coulomb and viscous damping are presented. For a base-excited system, the inclusion of a Coulomb damper with a suitable break-loose frequency can suppress the secondary resonances and chaotic motion. However, for a force-excited system, the introduction of Coulomb damping does not alter the bifurcation structure. Transmissibility indices have been defined for the solution obtained by numerical integration and the role of the subharmonic resonances and chaotic motion on the performance of the system is pointed out.