A high-static–low-dynamic-stiffness vibration isolator with the auxiliary system

High-static–low-dynamic-stiffness (HSLDS) vibration isolators seek to widen the frequency range of isolation by decreasing the dynamic stiffness so as to reduce the natural frequency, while maintaining the same static displacement as equivalent linear isolators. However, in many cases especially under light damping or large excitations, the peak transmissibility is very large and the hardening nonlinearity causes the transmissibility curve to bend to the right seriously or in other words causes the jump phenomenon, resulting in a greatly reduced isolation region. In this paper, an auxiliary system is added to the HSLDS isolator to overcome these disadvantages, with the static displacement of the isolation object remaining unchanged. Coefficient-varying harmonic balance method is proposed in this paper to find the dynamic response and most importantly analyze the stability of the steady-state response. The isolation performance of the HSLDS-AS isolator, which is evaluated by displacement transmissibility, is compared with that of the equivalent HSLDS isolator. The effects of system parameters on the isolation performance are investigated. It is shown that the auxiliary system can lower the peak transmissibility and eliminate the jump phenomenon, resulting in a wide isolation region, and the HSLDS-AS isolator has strong designability with many parameters tunable.