Nonlinear vibration of knitted spacer fabric under harmonic excitation

Abstract

Knitted spacer fabrics can be an alternative material to typical rubber sponges and polyurethane foams for the protection of the human body from vibration exposure, such as automotive seat cushions and anti-vibration gloves. To provide a theoretical basis for the understanding of the nonlinear vibration behavior of the mass-spacer fabric system under harmonic excitation, experimental, analytical and numerical methods are used. Different from a linear mass-spring-damper vibration model, this study builds a phenomenological model with the asymmetric elastic force and the fractional derivative damping force to describe the periodic solution of the mass-spacer fabric system under harmonic excitation. Mathematical expression of the harmonic amplitude versus frequency response curve (FRC) is obtained using the harmonic balance method (HBM) to solve the equation of motion of the system. Parameter values in the model are estimated by performing curve fit between the modeled FRC and the experimental data of acceleration transmissibility. Theoretical analysis concerning the influence of varying excitation level on the FRCs is carried out, showing that nonlinear softening resonance turns into nonlinear hardening resonance with the increase of excitation level, due to the quadratic stiffness term and the cubic stiffness term in the model, respectively. The quadratic stiffness term also results in biased vibration response and causes an even order harmonic distortion. Besides, the increase of excitation level also results in elevated peak transmissibility at resonance.