Experimental investigation of a nonlinear damper system

An experimental investigation of the performance of a nonlinear damper system is presented. The nonlinear system is composed of a multi unit particle damper and a multi-degree-of-freedom structure. A series of shaking table tests are carried out to characterize this nonlinear system and to evaluate the vibration control effects of particle dampers. The experimental results indicate that the primary structure with particle dampers has smaller response compared with that of the structure without particle dampers; that the excitation characterization influences the performance of such a nonlinear system; and that the particle movements of plug flow pattern can yield good vibration attenuation effects. It is shown that by using a properly designed multi-unit particle dampers, a lightly damped primary system can achieve a reasonable reduction in its response, with a small weight penalty.