Experimental demonstration of transient resonance capture in a system of two coupled oscillators with essential stiffness nonlinearity

The purpose of this paper is to report an experimental study of transient resonance capture that may occur in a system of two coupled oscillators with essential (i.e., nonlinearizable) nonlinearity. It is shown that during transient resonance capture the two oscillators are in a state of resonance, the frequency of which varies with time, which leads to targeted nonlinear energy transfer. Further evidence of resonance capture is a non-time-like behavior of the phase difference between the oscillators; this quantity is monitored using the Hilbert transform or the Huang–Hilbert transform in the case of multifrequency response signals.