An Efficient Technique for the Approximate Analysis of Vibro-Impact

Abstract

An approximate solution procedure is presented for a class of steady vibro-impact problems consisting of adjacent structures separated by a gap and subjected to harmonic base excitation. The procedure is based on a weighted mean-square linearization technique, and is capable of substantial reduction of computational effort over that required for an exact numerical simulation. As an illustration of the general approach, a detailed analysis of an example problem is presented, together with a comparison of results with an exact solution. It is shown for the example problem that the level of accuracy of the approximate solution is adequate for many applications.