Experimental study of steady-state localization in coupled beams with active nonlinearities

Steady-state nonlinear motion confinement is experimentally studied in a system of weakly coupled cantilever beams with active stiffness nonlinearities. Quasistatic swept-sine tests are performed by periodically forcing one of the beams at frequencies close to the first two closely spaced modes of the system, and experimental nonlinear frequency response curves for certain nonlinearity levels are generated. Of particular interest is the detection of strongly localized steady-state motions, wherein vibrational energy becomes spatially confined mainly to the directly excited beam. Such motions exist in neighborhoods of strongly localized antiphase nonlinear normal modes (NNMs) which bifurcate from a spatially extended NNM of the system. Steady-state nonlinear motion confinement is an essentially nonlinear phenomenon with no counterpart in linear theory, and can be implemented in vibration and shock isolation designs of mechanical systems.