Global vibration control of nonlinear energy sinks

Although a linear vibration absorber (LVA) or nonlinear energy sink (NES) can effectively mitigate the vibration of a primary system in harmonic excitation, the amplitude of the absorber can be very large. Using the differential evolution algorithm, this paper pioneers the global control of the primary system and absorber to achieve decent vibration mitigation and decrease the global response. The results show that the maximum amplitude of the primary system and absorber can be controlled at the same level, and the global control strategy does not change the resonance frequency of the primary system. Compared with the LVA, the NES has similar vibration mitigation effects, mass ratio, and damping values. However, different from the LVA, the NES can achieve optimal mitigation effects in multiple optimal combinations of spring stiffness and geometry parameter and have smaller frequency responses in large excitation. Therefore, this paper proves the superiority of the NES in global vibration control.