Towed wheel shimmy suppression through a nonlinear tuned vibration absorber

Abstract

The implementation of the nonlinear tuned vibration absorber (NLTVA) for the suppression of shimmy vibration in towed wheels is addressed in this study. We adopt a modified straight tangent tyre model of a single-degree-of-freedom towed wheel system with an attached NLTVA. Stability analysis illustrated that the NLTVA can significantly improve the stability of the equilibrium of the wheel. Bifurcation analysis highlighted the existence of large bistable regions, which undermines the system’s safety. However, numerical continuation analysis, coupled with a dynamical integrity investigation, revealed that the addition of an intentional softening nonlinearity in the absorber restoring force characteristic enables the complete suppression of the bistable regions, also reducing the amplitude of shimmy oscillations in the unstable region. Quasiperiodic motions were also identified; however, their practical relevance seems marginal.

Application of nonlinear energy sink in suppressing wheel shimmy for advanced vehicle chassis design under independent wheel subsystems

“…The idea of utilizing a DVA for suppressing shimmy instabilities is not novel, however, the employment of a DVA in the wheel subsystem and full body of typical grounded vehicles is the first time. In [17], a nonlinear tuned vibration absorber is implemented on a towed wheel. The considered DVA has a linear and a nonlinear restoring force and exhibited excellent performance.…”

Predicting Saddle-Node Bifurcations Using Transient Dynamics: A Model-Free Approach

“…In reality, very few, if any, physical systems of engineering relevance have globally stable solutions, and unexpected behavior can occur even in well-understood systems, in the case of large perturbations. This issue is demonstrated by numerous examples such as wheel shimmy [1][2][3], machining processes [4,5], robot control [6][7][8], flutter instability [9,10], break squeal [11,12], traffic jams [13,14], electric blackouts [15,16], human balance [17,18], turbulent flows [19][20][21] and prey-predator ecosystems [22,23], to name a few.…”

Predicting saddle-node bifurcations using transient dynamics: a model-free approach

“…In reality, very few, if any, physical systems of engineering relevance have globally stable solutions, and unexpected behavior can occur even in well-understood systems, in the case of large perturbations. This issue is demonstrated by numer-ous examples such as wheel shimmy [1][2][3], machining processes [4,5], robot control [6][7][8], flutter instability [9,10], break squeal [11,12], traffic jams [13,14], pressure relief valves [15], electric blackouts [16,17], human balance [18,19], turbulent flows [20][21][22] and prey-predator ecosystems [23,24], to name a few.…”