NES-Based Multi-mode Vibration Absorber for a Sandwich Plate in Thermal Environment

Purpose: Composite sandwich structures are becoming an essential part of engineering appliances due to their excellent mechanical and structural properties, high strength-to-weight as well as stiffness-to-weight ratios. And so, they are widely used in aerospace and marine applications, such as airplane wings, flight control surfaces, turbine blades, ship interiors, and small boats and yachts. Despite their superior properties, the sandwich plates consisting of an aluminum core and carbon fiber-reinforced plastic face sheets exhibit low-frequency resonant modes when subjected to external excitation. Therefore, in this paper, a nonlinear energy sink (NES) is attached to the thermally induced sandwich plate to attenuate the resonant peaks passively in a broad frequency range. Methods: The equation of motion of the sandwich plate-NES system is obtained by utilizing Lagrange Euler’s equation followed by Galerkin discretization. The analytical solution of the system is obtained by the complexification averaging method and arc-length continuation method. The nonlinear and stability analyses are also conducted for the present system. Results: The results show that an optimum NES obtained by the sensitivity analysis of the response curve attenuates the resonant peaks effectively and is applicable in a wide frequency range at various temperatures. Conclusion: Optimum parameters and the location of the NES help to eliminate the complex nonlinear dynamical phenomena at the first resonance frequency in various thermal environments.