Ludovic Renson

Nonlinear normal modes, modal interactions and isolated resonance curves

Abstract The objective of the present study is to explore the connection between the nonlinear normal modes of an undamped and unforced nonlinear system and the isolated resonance curves that may appear in the damped response of the forced system. To this end, an energy balance technique is used to predict the amplitude of the harmonic forcing that is necessary to excite a specific nonlinear normal mode. A cantilever beam with a nonlinear spring at its tip serves to illustrate the developments. The practical implications of isolated resonance curves are also discussed by computing the beam response to sine sweep excitations of increasing amplitudes.

Global parametrization of the invariant manifold defining nonlinear normal modes using the koopman operator

Nonlinear normal modes of vibration have been the focus of many studies during the past years and different characterizations of them have been proposed. The present work focuses on damped systems, and considers nonlinear normal mode motions as trajectories lying on an invariant manifold, following the geometric approach of Shaw and Pierre. We provide a novel characterization of the invariant manifold, that rests on the spectral theory of the Koopman operator. A main advantage of the proposed approach is a global parametrization of the manifold, which avoids folding issues arising with the use of displacement-velocity coordinates.Copyright

The harmonic balance method for advanced analysis and design of nonlinear mechanical systems

As a tool for analyzing nonlinear large-scale structures, the harmonic balance (HB) method has recently received increasing attention in the structural dynamics community. However, its use was so far limited to the approximation and study of periodic solutions, and other methods as the shooting and orthogonal collocation techniques were usually preferred to further analyze these solutions and to study their bifurcations. This is why the present paper intends to demonstrate how one can take advantage of the HB method as an efficient alternative to the cited techniques. Two different applications are studied, namely the normal modes of a spacecraft and the optimization of the design of a vibration absorber. The interesting filtering feature of the HB method and the implementation of an efficient bifurcation tracking extension are illustrated.

Identification of nonlinear normal modes of engineering structures under broadband forcing

Abstract The objective of the present paper is to develop a two-step methodology integrating system identification and numerical continuation for the experimental extraction of nonlinear normal modes (NNMs) under broadband forcing. The first step processes acquired input and output data to derive an experimental state-space model of the structure. The second step converts this state-space model into a model in modal space from which NNMs are computed using shooting and pseudo-arclength continuation. The method is demonstrated using noisy synthetic data simulated on a cantilever beam with a hardening-softening nonlinearity at its free end.

A spectral characterization of nonlinear normal modes

Belgian Network DYSCO (Dynamical Systems, Control, and Optimization) funded by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme initiated by the Belgian Science Policy Office

Nonlinear Normal Modes of Nonconservative Systems

Linear modal analysis is a mature tool enjoying various applications ranging from bridges to satellites. Nevertheless, modal analysis fails in the presence of nonlinear dynamical phenomena and the development of a practical nonlinear analog of modal analysis is a current research topic. Recently, numerical techniques (e.g., harmonic balance, continuation of periodic solutions) were developed for the computation of nonlinear normal modes (NNMs). Because these methods are limited to conservative systems, the present study targets the computation of NNMs for nonconservative systems. Their definition as invariant manifolds in phase space is considered. Specifically, a new finite element technique is proposed to solve the set of partial differential equations governing the manifold geometry.

Nonlinear modal analysis of the SmallSat spacecraft

Non-linear elements are present in practically all spacecraft structures. The assumption of a (quasi-)linear structure is nevertheless adequate for structural analyses and design verification purposes in those cases where these structural non-linearities are relatively weak or not substantially activated by the mechanical environments encountered during the launch or during ground testing. However, when significant non-linear effects in spacecraft structures are no longer negligible then linear modal analysis will not be able to handle non-linear dynamical phenomena in an adequate manner: the development of a non-linear analogue of linear modal analysis becomes an urgent and important issue. The objective of this paper is to show that nonlinear normal modes (NNMs) represent a useful and practical tool in this context. A full-scale spacecraft structure is considered and is modeled using the finite element method. Its NNMs are computed using advanced numerical algorithms, and the resulting dynamics is then carefully analyzed. Nonlinear phenomena with no linear counterpart including nonlinear modal interactions are also highlighted.

The Harmonic Balance Method for Bifurcation Analysis of Nonlinear Mechanical Systems

Because nowadays structural engineers are willing to use or at least understand nonlinearities instead of simply avoiding them, there is a need for numerical tools performing analysis of nonlinear large-scale structures. Among these techniques, the harmonic balance (HB) method is certainly one of the most commonly used to study finite element models with reasonably complex nonlinearities. However, in its classical formulation the HB method is limited to the approximation of periodic solutions. For this reason, the present paper proposes to extend the method to the detection and tracking of codimension-1 bifurcations in the system parameters space. As an application, the frequency response of a spacecraft is studied, together with two nonlinear phenomena, namely quasiperiodic oscillations and detached resonance curves. This example illustrates how bifurcation tracking using the HB method can be employed as a promising design tool for detecting and eliminating such undesired behaviors.

Bridging the Gap Between Nonlinear Normal Modes and Modal Derivatives

Nonlinear Normal Modes (NNMs) have a clear conceptual relation to the classical linear normal modes (LNMs), yet they offer a solid theoretical framework for interpreting a wide class of non-linear dynamical phenomena with no linear counterpart. The main difficulty associated with NNMs is that their calculation for large-scale models is expensive, particularly for distributed nonlinearities. Repeated direct time integrations need to be carried out together with extensive sensitivity analysis to reproduce the frequency-energy dependence of the modes of interest.In the present paper, NNMs are computed from a reduced model obtained using a quadratic transformation comprising LNMs and Modal Derivatives (MDs). Previous studies have shown that MDs can capture the essential dynamics of geometrically nonlinear structures and can greatly reduce the computational cost of time integration.A direct comparison with the NNMs computed from another standard reduction technique highlights the capability of the proposed reduction method to capture the essential nonlinear phenomena. The methodology is demonstrated using simple examples with 2 and 4 degrees of freedom.

Experimental identification of the complex dynamics of a strongly nonlinear spacecraft structure

The present paper addresses the identification of a real-lif e spacecraft structure possessing an impact-type nonlinearcomponent. The complete identification procedure, i.e. from no nlinearity detection to parameter estimation, is carried ou t using experimental data collected during a typical spacecraft qu alification test campaign. The complementary use of several tech niques reveals particularly interesting and complex pheno mena such as nonlinear jumps, nonlinear modal interactions, int ernal force relaxation and chattering during impacts.