The mem-inerter: A new mechanical element with memory

Abstract

A new two-terminal mechanical element named the mem-inerter described by a relation between integrated momentum and displacement is introduced as the memory counterpart of an inerter. It exhibits an individual “fingermark” featured by a pinched hysteresis loop located within the momentum-velocity plane. The mem-inerter is attached to a simple mass-spring-damper system. The system equipped with a mem-inerter is mathematically modeled, and its nonlinear vibration equation is derived. To ensure a fair performance comparison between the systems equipped with the mem-inerter and the inerter, the nonlinear mem-inerter with an appropriate helix pitch can be proved to be equivalent to the linear inerter with a fixed inertance by the fact that the systems have the same displacement transmissibility for forced response. Under such a premise, it is found that the system with the mem-inerter having positive initial displacement has better performance for free response than the system with the inerter. Furthermore, the application scenario that both systems are arranged on an inclined plane is taken as an example of the positive initial displacement. The example demonstrates that the system with the mem-inerter has significantly better transient performance than the system with the inerter.