Vibro-impact dynamics of an experimental rig with two-sided constraint and bidirectional drift

Abstract

This paper demonstrates a theoretical and experimental study on a universal vibro-impact system with bidirectional drift. With a dedicated experimental rig that is able to verify numerical simulations, the system has revealed various bifurcations from a piecewise-smooth dynamical model involving impact and dry friction. This experimental rig with a two-sided constraint is designed with adjustable configurations which can be used for experimental testing of versatile piecewise-smooth dynamical systems, e.g., the impact oscillator, the drifting oscillator and the capsule system. It is able to be customised to alter different system parameters, such as friction, number of constraints, mass ratio, impact gap and constraint stiffness, for developing and testing various control strategies. In this paper we particularly studied several types of bifurcations from our preliminary experimental results and discussed the dynamical responses of the system under different excitation frequencies and amplitudes. It was found that with a higher excitation frequency and amplitude, the vibro-impact dynamics on both ends of the constraints could result in a large amount of uncertainties, thus bi-stable and chaotic motions are likely to be observed. While being unstable, the system runs with a relatively high energy efficiency in this configuration.