Simulation and Experimental Validation of Modal Analysis For Non-Linear Symmetric Systems

ARTICLE IN PRESS
Mechanical Systems
and
Signal Processing
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 19 (2005) 2141
www.elsevier.com/locate/jnlabr/ymssp
Simulation and experimental validation of modal analysis for

non-linear symmetric systems
R. Camillaccia,*, N.S. Fergusonb, P.R. Whiteb
a
Dipartimento de Scienze dellIngegneria Civile, University of Roma TRE, Italy

b
Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, UK
Received 14 April 2003; received in revised form 6 May 2003; accepted 14 May 2004
Abstract
A dual approach, direct and inverse, is proposed for the study of a subset of discrete mechanical nonlinear systems. Applying the denition of a mode for a non-linear system, the response calculation is
rened for a class of mechanical systems possessing elastic restoring forces proportional to the cube of the
displacement. The relationship between the modal natural frequencies and modal amplitudes of oscillation
is analytically computed using the Harmonic Balance Method. An identication method, which operates on
the free response of the system, is presented and it is shown to be capable of recovering these functional
relationships. Comparisons of the analytical approximation and identication solutions are made in order
to evaluate the methods effectiveness and its range of application. This comparison is achieved through
numerical simulation.
An experiment performed on a physical mechanical system exhibiting non-linear behaviour is then
presented. For such a system, the analytical relationships between modal natural frequencies and modal
amplitudes of oscillation are calculated using its mechanical parameters. These relationships are compared
with those identied experimentally and nally the results and possible extensions to the work are
discussed.
r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
*Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: cami@uniroma3.it (R. Camillacci), nsf@isvr.soton.ac.uk (N.S. Ferguson), prw@isvr.soton.ac.uk
(P.R. White).
0888-3270/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ymssp.2004.05.002
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R. Camillacci et al. / Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 19 (2005) 2141
1. Introduction
The problem of extending the concept of modal analysis to non-linear mechanical systems has
been widely studied since the second half of the last century. The rst denition of a Non-linear
Normal Mode (NNM) of a conservative system was given by Rosenberg [1], according to whom
a NNM is a periodic oscillation where all material points of the system reach their maximum
displacement at the same instant of time, and they all pass through their equilibrium position at
another instant of time. More recently, this denition was also extended to non-conservative
systems by Shaw and Pierre [2,3]. These authors dene a NNM as a motion which takes place on
an invariant manifold of co-dimension two in the phase-space. Several studies have focused on the
approximate analytical computation of the non-linear modal properties both by perturbation [4]
and energetic [5] methods that are described in literature.
In general, the mode shape of a NNM depends on the amplitude of oscillation, but, as in [1], it
is well known that there are some particular classes of non-linear mechanical systems for which
the mode shapes are independent of the amplitude; these modes are called similar modes. For such
systems exact solutions have also been proposed [5]. By analogy to linear systems theory, a similar
NNM is associated with a particular set of initial conditions, but since the principle of the
superposition does not apply in non-linear systems theory, the NNMs, even if they characterise
unequivocally the dynamical system, they cannot be used directly to calculate the response under
arbitrary initial conditions. In order to avoid this difculty several approaches have been
proposed in the literature [6]. Among these there is the concept of Coupled Non-linear Modes
(CNM) [7]. In this approach, the free vibrations of a non-linear and non-conservative system are
approximated by a linear combination of harmonic terms. Every harmonic term depends on a
mode shape vector and on its corresponding frequency. In this way it is possible to characterise
the dynamic behaviour of a non-linear system under arbitrary initial conditions.
An important aspect of CNMs is that both the modal frequencies and the mode shapes depend
on the amplitudes of all of the modes. It is assumed that if a system is endowed with similar
NNMs it has similar CNMs as well, and in that case just the frequencies depend on the modal
amplitudes [8]. It is possible to extract the temporal evolution of the CNM from the knowledge of
the time histories in free vibration (the inverse problem), by use of appropriate identication
techniques [813].
In this paper a specic class of non-linear mechanical systems is considered, that is systems with
a linear and cubic forcedisplacement relationships that possess similar amplitude independent
modes. Initially the relationships between the modal frequencies and the modal amplitudes are
calculated analytically using the method of Harmonic Balance (HB). Then an identication
technique that is able to identify experimentally these relationships from the response of the
system in free vibration is presented. Existing methods [1013] for this identication determine the
relationship between the modal frequencies and time. Consequently they are unable to
characterise the dynamical behaviour of the system, since the results depend upon on the initial
conditions. In this work, the proposed procedure is able to identify the dynamic behaviour of
systems by relating the frequencies of the CNM to the modal amplitudes and not to time.
A validation is undertaken based on numerical simulations with the goal of determining the
limits of application of the procedure. Finally, the results from applying this technique to
measurements from an experimental system containing geometric non-linearities are presented.
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2. Analytical CNM for non-linear systems

Consider a n degree of freedom non-conservative mechanical system, described by the following
equation of motion:
Mx. xCx Fx 0;
where M and xC are the n n mass matrix and n n damping matrix, respectively, x is a real
positive parameter such that 0ox51; x is the n element displacement vector and F(x) is the vector
of restoring forces. For such a system, the displacement response of the ith degree of freedom can
be approximated by the following relationship under the assumption of small amplitudes:
n
X
Yij aaj cos Fj a;
2
xi
j1
where a a1 ; a2 ; y; an is the vector of amplitudes of the n harmonic components of the

response. Since the system is damped a depends on time. Yij and Fj ; are, respectively, the modal
coefcients and the total phase; both of them depend on all of the modal amplitudes, i.e. on the
vector a. Fj is the sum of the instantaneous frequencies Oj and the initial phase jj :
Z t
Fj
Oj as ds jj:
3
0
If one collects all of the j components Yij for every degree of freedom, the modal shape vector
Yj is obtained:
0
1
Y1j a1 a2 ?an
B Y a a ?a C
n C
B 2j 1 2
4
Yj B
C:
@
A
^
Ynj a1 a2 ?an
Every pair Yj a; Oj a denes a CNM. Thus a CNM depends on all of the modal amplitudes
a1 ; a2 ; y; an :
By application of the HB Method it is possible to calculate the CNM [7] and so by (2) the
approximate response of the non-linear system. It is necessary that (2) represents a good
approximation of the response when the amplitudes of oscillation are small.
If the modal shape Yj does not depend on the amplitude the mode is called similar [1]. Amongst
all mechanical systems possessing similar modes, one class of non-linear systems have been
analysed here, where the restoring force is expressed by
X
X
l
nl 3
nl
kih
xi xh kih
xi
kih
xi xh 3 ;
5
Fi kiil xi
iah
l
iah
nl
where k and k are the linear and non-linear stiffnesses, respectively.

One can normalise the mode shapes with respect to the pth degree of freedom Ypj 1; j
1; y; n such that
n
n
X
X
aj cos Fj a;
xh
Yhj aj cos Fj a:
6
xp
j1
j1
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The restoring force for the pth degree of freedom is

#
"
# "
X
X
3
l
l
nl 3
nl
Fp Fpl Fpnl kpp xp
kph xp xh kpp xp
kph xp xh ;
h;pah
h;pah
where Fpl and Fpnl are the linear and non-linear restoring force, respectively. Because of the
linearity of the integration operator one can calculate separately the coefcients of the Fourier
expansion:1
Z
Z
Z
1
8
J Fp cos Fj dU Fpl cos Fj dU Fpnl cos Fj dU Ijl Ijnl :
2 pj
Substituting (6) into (7) and (7) into (8), see the appendix for denition of the integrals, it can be
shown that
n
X
Ijnl
ghj aj a2h ;
9
Ijl g0j aj ;
h1
where ghj are constant coefcients resulting from the evaluation of the integrals in Eq. (8). HB
requires that [8]
1
J mij O2j :
aj pj
10
For the class of systems under consideration a general relationship between the jth modal
frequency Oj and the modal amplitudes is obtained:
n
X
chj a2h ;
11
O2j c0j
h1
where chj are constants that depend on the mechanical parameters of the system. Eq. (11)
represents the relationships between the main frequency of each CNM and all of the modal
amplitudes. In other words, the coefcients chj dene, unequivocally, the dynamical properties of
the non-linear system.
Eq. (11) thus represents the frequency modulation law of the jth modal component for a n-dof
lightly damped system possessing similar modes and cubic restoring force terms.
It is well known [4] that non-linear mechanical systems can possess internal resonances. In such
a condition bifurcation of modes can arise, which means that the number of modes can be greater
than the number of degrees of freedom. Yet, it is also known that even if the ratio of two (or
more) modal frequencies is an integer, but appropriate orthogonal conditions are satised [14,15],
the modes do not have internal resonances, and thus bifurcation cannot occur. Since the class of
systems under consideration possess similar modes, that is to say that the non-linear mode shapes
1
where Jij are the coefcients of the rst-order Fourier expansion:

Z
Jij 2 Fi cos Fj dU;
R
where : dU
R 2p
1 R 2p
? 0 : dU1 dU2 ydU3 :
2pn 0
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are the same as those of the linearised system, the orthogonality conditions between mode shapes
are always satised for these systems [14], and hence bifurcation of modes can never occur.
3. Identication procedure
A two-level identication procedure has been developed in order to experimentally identify the
frequency modulation laws, as predicted by (11), from time histories of a system undergoing free
vibration. The rst level of identication computes the evolutionary modal parameters, i.e. the
modal parameters are computed as a function of time via a timefrequency representation. In the
second identication level, the evolutionary modal parameters are used to estimate the coefcients
chj in Eq. (11), allowing the frequency modulation laws to be expressed as a linear function of the
square of the modal amplitudes.
3.1. First level of identification
In the literature [8,10,11,13] several timefrequency transforms have been developed in order to
provide information about the temporal evolution of modal parameters. The objectives here are
to extract both amplitude and phase information from the data, so we naturally seek to employ a
linear (rather than quadratic) timefrequency transform. The representation adopted here is the
Gabor transform [11].
The Gabor transform Gx t; o of a signal xt is a complex function of two variables, dened by
2
Z N
1
t
wt txt expjot dt; wt p exp
Gx t; o
;
12
Dt
pDt
N
where t is time, o is the angular frequency and wt is a Gaussian windowing function with width
parameter Dt.
To conduct the analysis we require access to n time histories corresponding to each of the
degrees of freedom in the system. For each of the time histories, xi t; the corresponding Gxi t; o
is calculated, from which, the modal frequencies fij tk are identied for time instants tk (with
k 1yN) by following the ridges in the modulus of Gxi t; o:
Several techniques are proposed in the literature in order to identify the location of the peaks in
the transform Gxi t; o [11,13]. The most important problem affecting this operation is the
presence of close modes, i.e. a high modal density, and the possible signicant overlap in the
frequency domain. This problem can be overcome if a curve-tting procedure is used [11] and is
essentially the same problem as that encountered in standard modal analysis when seeking to
extract parameters of multi-modal system. The majority of these forms of procedure are iterative,
and hence the main drawback of the implementation of a curve-tting procedure is the
computational cost. In order to reduce the computational costs, in this work, the modal
components are simply identied following the ridges of the Gxi t; o modulus, and, exactly, from
the modulus of every Gxi t; o; the amplitudes of the peaks Aij tk are extracted along with the
corresponding phases Pij tk : One degree of freedom is selected as the reference, this is designated
the pth degree of freedom. The modal components of the remaining modes are normalised with
respect to the reference degree of freedom in the following manner. The modulus Yij and the sign
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sij of the normalised modal components are dened as

Aij tk
jYij tk j
;
sij tk signcosPij Ppj :
Apj tk
13
Of course the identication error of Yij for every instant of time is greater than that by applying
a curve-tting estimation, but it is noted that for the class of systems under consideration the
mode shapes do not depend on time. Thus temporal averaging can be used to enhance the
estimates of modal components by computing
PN
sij tk jYij tk j
Yij k1
;
14
N
where N is the total number of time samples analysed.
In this way, a very good estimation of the modal components is performed. In the presence of a
reasonably high modal density this has been checked with numerical validation of the procedure
[10] and found to be reasonable.
At this point it is possible to calculate the time histories in the modal domain by the modal
matrix containing the mode shapes
1
0
Y11 y Y1n
C
B
Y@ ^ & ^ A
Yn1 ? Ynn
using
q Y1 x;
15
where the dimensions of q and x are n N and they represent the time histories in the physical
and modal space, respectively. From the time histories in the modal space the modal amplitudes
aj tk are extracted using the Hilbert transform [12]. An example of this is illustrated in Fig. 1,
where the Gabor transform is given for a simulated time history of a 2 dof system, the
corresponding time histories are shown in Fig. 2.
Fig. 1. Modulus of the Gabor transform for a simulated two degree of freedom coupled non-linear system.
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Fig. 2. Time histories for simulated data in the physical space (x) and modal space (q).
It is also observed, using the Hilbert Transform, that the modal frequencies fij tk ; already
identied by following the ridges of the Gabor Transform could also be again identied from
every modal time history qj tk : The comparison of the two modal frequency identications was
used as a check during the application of this rst level of identication.
3.2. Second level of identification
The frequency modulation laws are identied by a linear regression analysis, tting the data to a
linear relationship in the squared modal amplitudes a2j tk :
* ij tk 2pfij tk 2 and a* h tk a2 tk ; the error is dened as the difference between
Dening O
h
the squared angular frequency calculated using Eq. (11) O2j tk and that identied experimentally
* ij tk
O
n
X
* ij tk c*i
* ij tk :
eij tk O2j tk O
c*ihj a* h tk O
16
0j
h1
Minimization of the norm of the temporal error vector jjeij jj2 where eij feij tk gk ; leads to
identication of the coefcients c*i0j ; c*ihj :
These coefcients do not depend on i; i.e. they are the same for all degrees of freedom. This
feature can be exploited to average results across the degrees of freedom, in order to further
reduce the identication errors.
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3.3. Numerical validation

Various numerical simulations have been performed in order to validate the developed
procedure. In the numerical validation, the results obtained by analytical analysis (HB) are
compared with those obtained from the simulated time histories. The aim of the numerical
validation is to investigate both the characteristics and the limits of the whole proposed
procedure. The differences between the analytical and identied results are due to two main
sources of error: the rst one is related to the analytical computation of the modal parameters by
the approximate HB method; the second one is related to the approximate nature of the
parameter estimates obtained from the timefrequency analysis. Unfortunately, no exact
analytical methods exist for the computation of CNM parameters of a non-linear system, and
thus the two sources of error cannot be distinguished.
Briey presented are results in terms of the percentage difference E, which represents the
difference between the coefcients of the modal relationships calculated analytically and the
coefcients of the modal relationships identied by analysis of the time series
Eijh 100
cihj c*ihj
cihj
17
In this way it has been possible to use the numerical validation in order to assess the sensitivity of
the procedure to several factors, specically, the amplitude of oscillation, the damping, the signalto-noise ratio and the modal density. Just the main conclusions concerning this sensitivity analysis
are reported herein for the sake of brevity [10].
The amplitude of oscillation are required to be small, in order to neglect the effects of sub and
super harmonics. Numerical simulations have been performed on a 2-dof symmetrical system
l
l
l
nl
nl
nl
k12
k22
kl and k11
k12
k22
knl ) varying just the initial displacements. The
(with k11
results are presented as a function of the parameter K, which corresponds to the ratio between the
non-linear and linear restoring forces
K
knl x301 knl x201
;
kl x01
kl
18
where x01 is the initial displacement given to one degree of freedom, the remaining initial
displacements are 0. Results of the error investigation for these simulations are depicted in Fig. 3
for the two modes of oscillation.
Inspecting the results in Fig. 3, one can see that the largest errors occur for both high and small
levels of excitation. The larger errors at high amplitudes arise because of the approximate nature
of the HB solution, whilst the increased error at low amplitude relates to the fact that at these
amplitudes the changes in frequency that occur during the response are small, so are necessarily
measured with greater uncertainty. To illustrate the latter effect, plots of two Gabor transforms
are presented in Fig. 4 for small and large amplitudes. In Fig. 4 the frequency variations are
clearly evident on the high amplitude trace, but are almost imperceptible in the low-amplitude
example. One can also see that the terms c01 and c02 ; which relate to the linear component of
stiffness, are always accurately identied.
The damping of the system is assumed to be light in order that the damped natural frequency
can be approximated by the undamped natural frequency. To assess the errors introduced by this
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Fig. 3. Relative difference on the frequency modulation law coefcients between the identied and analytically results
Eij vs. K where () c0j is the constant term and (y) c1j and (- - -) c2j are the factors multiplying the squared amplitudes
of the rst and second mode, respectively.
approximation the percentage difference E is shown as a function of the linear modal damping in
Fig. 5. It is observed that an increase in the errors occurs with an increase in modal damping. Fig.
6 relates to the identication with the greatest error and compares the results of analytical
computation by HB with the results identied from the procedure developed here. From this it
can be observed that one can achieve a good identication even if there is a large error (3040%)
on the individual coefcients. This leads one to suggest that, for reasonable values of modal
damping, relationship (11) is a good representation of the modal frequency behaviour.
Finally, a random signal was added to the simulation outputs in order to mimic the presence of
Gaussian noise, with zero mean. The results are given in Fig. 7 as a function of the parameter R,
which is the ratio between the standard deviation of noise and the amplitude of overall oscillation,
effectively a measure of noise-to-signal ratio. As can be observed, the procedure is able to give
good results for R up to 40%. Further investigations [10] have demonstrated that the procedure is
reasonably independent of the modal separation.
To summarise, the numerical validation has shown that the proposed procedure works well
within a certain range of excitation amplitudes and when the damping is light. Moreover the
method is robust to modest levels of noise and independent of modal density.
4. Description and mathematical model of an experimental system

On the basis of the knowledge obtained from the numerical validation, the procedure has been
implemented on data collected from experimental tests.
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Fig. 4. Comparison of the Gabor transforms of the reference system at low (a) and at high (b) amplitudes of oscillation.
A physical system was designed to be exible enough to allow variation of the physical
parameters controlling the dynamics; the system is shown schematically in Fig. 8 and
photographed in Fig. 9. The system can be modelled as a two degree of freedom non-linear
mechanical system. It consists of 2 masses connected with 2 parallel tinned wires with diameter
0.0254 cm, the total length of each wire is 122.1 cm. The masses comprise of aluminum plates
(80.8 g for each mass). The wires have a mass of 1.94 g (1.2% of the total mass of the system) so
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Eij versus modal damping v, where () c0j is the constant term and (y) c1j and (- - -) c2j are the factors multiplying the
squared amplitudes of the rst and second mode, respectively.
Fig. 6. Comparison of analytically calculated and identied modal frequency modulation laws for a simulation with
modal damping 1.06% for the rst mode and 1.84% for the second mode. ai is the amplitude of ith mode.
can be neglected. The wires are arranged vertically, as can be seen in Fig. 9. Clamps are used to
allow the tension in the wire to be adjusted. Changing the type or number of wires connecting the
masses can be used to affect the axial stiffness in the system.
The non-linearity of the system is due to the high amplitudes of oscillation and depends on the
elastic restoring force of the wire as is evident in Eq. (21). The system is symmetric, since the
masses are equal and they were set in symmetric positions, thus the NNMCNM of the system
can be considered similar, i.e. the mode shapes do not change with amplitude of oscillation.
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Eij vs. signal noise, where () c0j is the constant term and (y) c1j and (- - -) c2j are the factors multiplying the squared
amplitudes of the rst and second mode, respectively.
The system is excited into free oscillation orthogonal to the plates (masses), thus a 2D model is
assumed and, taking into account the large displacements, the restoring forces on the two masses
are, respectively,
F1 S R1 sin y1 S R2 sin y2 ;
F2 S R3 sin y3 S R2 sin y2 ;
19
where yi represents the angles depicted in Fig. 8, S is the static tension applied to the wires (which
remains constant during all the tests duration) and Ri is the elastic restoring force due to the
dynamic axial strain
Ri
AE
di kai di ;
li
20
where A is a cross section, E is the Young modulus, li is the length of each section of wire, kai is
the axial stiffness and di is the axial dynamic extension.
For the model li bxi ; hence a third order expansion is used both for sin yi and di in terms of xi
for which it leads
q
xi 1 x3i
1 2
ox5i ; di li2 x2i li
x ox4i :
21
sin yi
2li i
li 3 li
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1
l1
1.
l2
x2
2.
l3
Fig. 8. Mathematical mode of the two degree of freedom system under investigation.
Substituting (21) into (19) and neglecting terms of order greater than three, leads to
F1 KSL1 x1 KSNL1 x31 KNL1 x31 KSL2 x1 x2 KSNL2 x1 x2 3 KNL2 x1 x2 3 ;
F2 KSL3 x2 KSNL3 x32 KNL3 x32 KSL2 x2 x1 KSNL2 x2 x1 3 KNL2 x2 x1 3 ;
22
where KSLi S=li ; KSNLi S=3li3 and KNLi kai =2li2 :
The maximum displacements in all the tests performed were of the order of 102 m (a few
centimeters) and because the ratio KSNLi =KNLi 2S=3AE is also of the order 103 this means that
the contributions which are in terms of KSNLi are small compared to the terms arising from the
dynamic strain KNLi and have been neglected.
Hence, only KNLi and KSLi terms are considered in Eq. (22). The ratio KNLi =KSLi AE=2li2 S is
of order 100 and since they are the restoring force coefcients for the cube of the actual
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Fig. 9. Physical model of the two degree of freedom system under investigation.
displacements (order 106 m) and the linear (order 102 m) terms in the displacement, respectively,
the ratio between the non-linear and linear part of the restoring force is of order 104, that is to
say that the system is weakly non-linear.
Moreover as l1 l3 l and dening l2 a1 l; allows the equations of motion (22) to be
expressed as
S
S
ka
ka
1 ax1 ax2 2 x31 2 a3 x1 x2 3 ;
l
l
2l
2l
S
S
ka
ka
F2 1 ax2 ax1 2 x32 2 a3 x2 x1 3 ;
l
l
2l
2l
F1
with ka AE=l:
The analytical CNM calculated by HB can then be obtained. For the rst mode

1
; O21 cl cnl l1
c1
1
and for the second mode

1
c2
; O22 1 2acl cnl l2
1
23
24
25
in which l1 0:375a21 0:75a22 ; l2 0:75a21 0:375 3a3 a22 ; cl S=lM and cnl ka =Ml 2 ; with
M the value of each mass. Eqs. (24) and (25) represent the modal frequency modulation laws of
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the two modes of the system. One can observe that the rst modal frequency law does not depend
on the stiffness between the two mass, since it is independent of a.
The physical system was instrumented by placing two accelerometers on the edge of each mass
parallel to the direction of the motion. The signals recorded by the accelerometers were integrated
twice in order to construct displacement records, because the identication procedure developed
needs displacement time histories as inputs.
5. Results
The system was tested in various congurations, these are summarised in Table 1. Fig. 10 shows
an example of the time histories recorded on the two masses, with the system in conguration 1,
from this data it is evident that the system has light damping, so satises the hypothesis discussed
in Section 2. In Fig. 11 the Gabor Transforms of these time histories are given. From the Gabor
Transforms, both the modal components normalised respect to one degree of freedom and the
modal frequencies are identied, as illustrated in Fig. 12. The symmetry in the system ensures that
the modal components do not change with the amplitude of oscillation, although, of course, the
modal frequencies do change as a function of amplitude. The modal components are identied
with an average error of 3% on the rst mode and 1% on the second mode.
The methodology presented in Section 3 is used to construct estimates c*l and c*nl of the
coefcients cl and cnl in (24) and (25). The results are presented in Table 2 based on two error
parameters el and enl ; dened as
el 100
cl c*l
;
cl
enl 100
cnl c*nl
:
cnl
26
For each conguration 3 tests were conducted using nominally the same initial conditions.
Experimentally ensuring repeatability of the exact initial conditions is difcult and in this
application unnecessary, so that each realisation was initiated by release from approximately the
same location. This uncertainty introduced some variation in the measured time series, however
the measured coefcients are insensitive to such modest variations as demonstrated in Section 3.3.
Each test allows one to construct 2 estimates of the coefcients cl and cnl (one estimate from each
of the measured time series). The values in Table 2 are computed by averaging the absolute values
of the errors el and enl over these 6 estimates.
Table 1
Summary of system congurations
System conguration
S (N)
ka (kN/m)
cl (s2)
cnl (s2 m2)
1
2
3
4
5
1
1
1
2.67
0.72
38.5
40.6
44.2
38.0
40.0
50
50
100
50
50
1170
1234
1344
921
1373
3.72 106
3.72 106
7.44 106
1.88 106
5.35 106
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Time history First Mass
0.04
0.02
0
-0.02
-0.04
10
15
20
25
30
35
25
30
35
time [sec]
Time history Second Mass
0.04
0.02
0
-0.02
-0.04
10
15
20
time [sec]
Fig. 10. Experimental displacement time histories of the two masses. Values in (m).
Inspecting the results in Table 2, one can see that the linear parameter is always well identied
(with an average error less than 2.5%) and that the non-linear parameters are always subject to
greater uncertainty. It is informative to examine more closely the worse case in Table 2,
corresponding to conguration 3. Fig. 13 depicts the percentage error in the estimates of modal
frequency for one test in this conguration (the realisation chosen is the one that gives rise to the
largest individual error). As observed in the numerical simulations, the observed differences
between the identied modal frequency and the frequency calculated by the analytical model are
signicantly smaller than that observed between the coefcients. Also the error decreases (in
magnitude), with time or, equivalently, that the error increases with the amplitude of oscillation.
This aspect is in agreement with the theory and the numerical validation presented in Section 3.
The effect of repositioning the masses along the wires, altering a; is to shift the frequencies;
more precisely, if the reciprocal distance between the two masses is increased ao1 the stiffness
between them decreases and the stiffness between the mass and the clamp increases. Hence the
rst modal frequency, which is independent of the central stiffness, is invariant whilst the second
modal frequency decreases. As the distance between the two masses is increased so the separation
in frequency between the two modes is decreased, as is the case in conguration 5, whilst in
conguration 4 the modal separation is increased. From Table 2 it is evident that the performance
of the estimation method is not aversely affected by such changes.
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Fig. 11. Gabor transform of the time history; (a) the rst mass; (b) the second mass.
6. Conclusions
For the class of non-linear symmetrical mechanical system under consideration, that is systems
with a cubic forcedisplacement relationship and endowed with similar modes, an analytical
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Identified frequencies
Modal Components
11
0.5
2
1.5
10
9.5
9
8.5
0.5
8
7.5
7
0
-0.5
6.5
6
-1
-1.5
-2
5
10
(a)
15
20
time[sec]
25
30
5.5
5
5
(b)
10
15
20
25
30
time[sec]
Fig. 12. (a) Identied modal components Y21 and Y22; (b) comparison between identied (- - -) and analytical ()
modal frequencies.
Table 2
Mean absolute percentage errors for different system congurations
Conguration
1
2
3
4
5
Mode 1
Mode 2
e%l
e%nl
e%l
e%nl
1.65
2.46
1.84
1.54
1.70
4.50
11.5
24.9
6.12
14.0
0.76
1.35
2.08
1.35
1.17
5.2
14.7
5.95
31.0
12.3
relationship between the modal frequencies and modal amplitudes were calculated. On the basis
of this, an identication procedure based on the Gabor Transform was developed. This procedure
is not only able to identify the evolutionary modal parameters, but also the modal frequency
relationships as a function of the mode amplitudes. In this way one can identify the dynamic
behaviour of the mechanical system under consideration.
Analysing the results of the numerical validation it is possible to state that the procedure works
well, within some limitations, specically when the amplitude of oscillation is small, and both
modal overlap and damping is low. Moreover the results were found to be robust to signicant
noise levels. In all of the simulations a good identication of the linear term was found even when
the above assumptions were stretched.
Finally the procedure was validated experimentally, by taking measurements from a physical
mechanical system exhibiting suitable non-linear behaviour. It was shown that, for the physical
ARTICLE IN PRESS
39
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
1st frequency
2nd frequency
-6
-7
10
15
20
time [sec]
25
30
Fig. 13. Percentage error between the modal frequency calculated analytically and identied experimentally.
system under consideration, the modal frequency relationships depend just on two parameters,
one related to the linear stiffness and the other one related to the non-linear stiffness. The
advantage of this representation of the frequency modal relationship is that there are fewer
parameters to identify and it leads to more accurate identication. Furthermore, because the two
parameters are the same for every modal frequency, it is possible to employ suitable averaging to
achieve more accurate evaluation of the parameters.
The extension of the procedure to other non-linear systems (for instance endowed with nonsimilar modes) is not trivial. This is because even if the calculation of CNM (and their associated
modal frequency modulation laws) by Harmonic Balance is always theoretically possible, in most
cases it is not possible to obtain a simple relationship between the modal frequencies and modal
amplitudes, such as the quadratic relationship considered here, i.e. Eq. (11). However, an
extension in this sense is desirable and is being considered.
Appendix
The Fourier coefcients are [2]
Z
Jij 2 Fi cos Fj dU;
A:1
R
R 2p
R 2p
1
where: : dU 2p
n
0 ? 0 : dF1 dF2 y dFn :
For the linearity of the integral operator, substituting the linear part of the resorting force in
Eq. (8), yields
Z

Z
Z
X
l
l
xp cos Fj dU xh cos Fj dU
kph
A:2
Ijl kpp xp cos Fj dU
h;pah
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40
substituting Eq. (6) in (A.2) leads to

Z
n
X
l
kpp
cos Fj
aj cos Fj dU
Ijl
j1
l
kph
Z
cos Fj
n
X
aj cos Fj dU
Z
cos Fj
j1
h;pah
n
X
!
Yhj aj cos Fj dU
A:3
j1
and because it is
Z
cos Fi cos Fj dU dij ;
A:4
where dij is the kroneker symbol, Eq. (A.3) becomes

X
l
l
aj
kph
1 Yhj aj g0j aj :
Ijl kpp
A:5
haj
Substituting the non-linear part of the restoring force in Eq. (8) leads to
Z
Z
X
nl 3
nl
Ijnl kpp
xp xh 3 cos Fj dU
xp cos Fj dU
kph
A:6
h;pah
and substituting Eq. (6) in (A.5), yields

Z
n
X
nl
kpp
cos Fj
a3j cos3 Fj dU
Ijnl
j1
0
!3 1
Z
n
n
X
X
X
nl @
kph
aj cos Fj dU
Yhj aj cos Fj dU A
cos Fj
h;pah
j1
and because it is
Z
3
cos3 Fi cos Fj dU dij ;
4
Z
cos2 Fi cos2 Fj dU 2 with iaj;
Z
cos2 Fi cos Fj cos Fh dU 0 with iajah;
Z
cos Fi cos Fj cos Fh cos Fk dU 0; iajahak;
Eq. (A.7) becomes
Ijnl
n
X
h1
ghj aj a2h :
A:7
j1
A:8
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References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
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Simulation and Experimental Validation of Modal Analysis For Non-Linear Symmetric Systems

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Simulation and Experimental Validation of Modal Analysis For Non-Linear Symmetric Systems

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