Considering that a mechanical spring can be compressed or stretched only, a protected object is prone to detach from the support spring when the system falls into the resonant region. To avoid this phenomenon, a nonlinear vibration isolator containing a viscoelastic end-stop buffer is developed, which can exhibit stiffness–hardening or stiffness–softening characteristics. Because the restoring force is asymmetrical and piecewise linear, a modified averaging method is applied to obtain steady-state solutions, which contain a bias term. A numerical method is then used to verify the analytical solutions, and their stability is determined. Finally, the effects of the structural parameters on the frequency response and force transmissibility are investigated. The jump avoidance condition is subsequently given. The results show that the modified averaging method is more accurate than the classical method. Decreasing the stiffness ratio can reduce the transmissibility peak and resonance frequency. Applying heavy damping in the end-stop buffer is beneficial for reducing transmissibility in the resonant region, whereas the isolation performance at high frequencies remains unchanged. The developed vibration system exhibits better isolation performance than the linear system when stiffness–softening characteristics are considered.
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