Model Reduction of a Continuous System with Friction-Induced Vibration Considering Separation and Re-Contact

The friction-induced vibration of a continuous system consisting of two flexible beams in sliding contact to represent a brake system is studied in this paper. Besides the motion of relative sliding when the two beams are in contact, the separation of beams may also happen in the system dynamics. The complex eigenvalue analysis for the stability of the steady sliding state and the transient dynamic analysis for the characteristics (intensity and periodicity) of the steady-state responses of the system are carried out. Moreover, the results obtained using different numbers of beam modes are acquired and compared. It is found that only a few low-order beam modes need to be incorporated to get accurate results of the stability of the steady sliding state and the steady-state responses of the continuous frictional system, which therefore theoretically justify the omission of high-order modes of continuous structures when investigating the friction-induced vibration of continuous systems and thereby greatly reduce the computational cost. Additionally, the inclusion of the separation and re-contact behavior has a significant effect on the number of required modes for accurate steady-state responses compared with that when no separation is considered, which also verifies the important role of the separation and re-contact behavior in the system dynamics. Besides, a reduced dynamic model that can produce identical dynamic behaviors to those of the continuous frictional system is constructed, with the structural parameters of the reduced model derived from the several key low-order modes of beams.