Systems with Contact Nonlinearities

This chapter focuses on exploiting contact nonlinearities. Dry friction and unilateral contact are ubiquitous in science and technology. Their effect cannot be properly described in a linearized way. Dry friction is often the main cause for dissipation in structural dynamics. Impulsive unilateral interactions (impacts) are ideal for cross-scale energy transfer. Contact is easy to practically realize, but the dynamics of mechanical systems undergoing contact interactions is challenging to accurately predict. This chapter is divided into friction damping, a self-adaptive system and impact absorbers. Besides illustrating the use of strong nonlinearity in those engineering applications, this chapter presents useful methodology, including predictive modeling and numerical computation techniques, and the concept of Nonlinear Modes.