Dynamics of Oscillators with Strongly Nonlinear Asymmetric Damping

Dynamics of a class of strongly nonlinear single degree of freedom oscillators is investigated. Their common characteristic is that they possess piecewise linear damping properties, which can be expressed in a general asymmetric form. More specifically, the damping coefficient and a constant parameter appearing in the equation of motion are functions of the velocity direction. This class of oscillators is quite general and includes other important categories of mechanical systems as special cases, like systems with Coulomb friction. First, an analysis is presented for locating directly exact periodic responses of these oscillators to harmonic excitation. Due to the presence of dry friction, these responses may involve intervals where the oscillator is stuck temporarily. Then, an appropriate stability analysis is also presented together with some quite general bifurcation results. In the second part of the work, this analysis is applied to several example systems with piecewise linear damping, in order to reveal the most important aspects of their dynamics. Initially, systems with symmetric characteristics are examined, for which the periodic response is found to be symmetric or asymmetric. Then, dynamical systems with asymmetric damping characteristics are also examined. In all cases, emphasis is placed on investigating the low forcing frequency ranges, where interesting dynamics is noticed. The analytical predictions are complemented with results obtained by proper integration of the equation of motion, which among other responses reveal the existence of quasiperiodic, chaotic and unbounded motions.