Nonlinear Dynamics in X-Structures

The class of X-structures/mechanisms have very obvious nonlinear stiffness and damping characteristics although these nonlinearities can be designed to be at a mild level in applications. However, with strong excitation and large vibration motion, the inherent nonlinearity can exhibit chaos or bifurcation phenomena as other nonlinear systems, not even to talk about bi-stable, tri-stable or other multi-stable cases potentially introduced by the X-structure (the latter will be discussed more in the following chapter about nonlinear manipulations). Therefore, it is interesting to discuss what potential complicated nonlinear dynamics that the X-structure could demonstrate, except those nonlinear stiffness and damping properties as revealed before.