Vibration induced sliding: theory and experiment for a beam with a spring-loaded mass

The study sets up a simple model for predicting vibration induced sliding of mass, and provides quantitative experimental evidence for the validity of the model. The results lend confidence to recent theoretical developments on using vibration induced sliding for passive vibration damping, and contributes to a further understanding of this nonlinear phenomenon.

A mathematical model is set up to describe vibration induced sliding for a base-excited cantilever beam with a spring-loaded pointmass. Approximations simplify the model into two nonlinear ordinary differential equations, describing motions of the system at near-resonant excitation of a single beam mode.

This simplified model is studied numerically and analytically, and tested against laboratory experiments. The experiments provide evidence that the simplified mathematical model retains those features of the real system that are necessary for making useful predictions of transient and stationary first-mode response.