Implementation of intentional strong nonlinearity for targeted energy transfer and passive energy management in structural and mechanical systems are discussed. By nonlinear targeted energy transfer one denotes the passive, nearly one-way transfer of vibration or shock energy from an excited or self-excited primary system to a set of local, dissipative and essentially nonlinear (i.e., non-linearizable) attachments (termed nonlinear energy sinks – NESs) where energy is spatially confined and locally dissipated. Although the NESs are local devices, due to their strong nonlinearity they can affect the global dynamics of the primary system to which they are attached over broad frequency and energy ranges. The NESs then act, in essence, as passive, broadband and adaptive boundary controllers, fully tunable with energy. The dynamics of the NESs are governed by cascades of transient/permanent resonance captures which can be predictably designed at the frequency and energy ranges of interest. After giving an overview of current applications of these concepts, a specific application of an intentionally nonlinear design for passive blast and shock mitigation of a large-scale structure is discussed, and bothy theoretical and experimental results are presented.

Alexander F. Vakakis received a PhD in Applied Mechanics from the California Institute of Technology (1990), an MSc from Imperial College, London (1985), and a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece (1984). He is faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) since 1990 (with an eight year break at the National Technical University of Athens), and currently holds the title of Grayce Wicall Gauthier Professor in Mechanical Engineering. He is a Fellow of ASME, and the recipient of the Thomas Bernard Hall Prize (2012) and the PE Publishing Award (2009), both from the UK Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division Thomas Caughey Award in Nonlinear Dynamics (2014). Among other topics his current research is in dynamics and bifurcations; intentional utilization of nonlinearity for design; nonlinear system identification and model updating; acoustic metamaterials and ordered granular media; nonlinear micro- and nano-resonators; fluid-structure interaction and aeroelastic flutter; and nonlinear vibration energy harvesting. He is the author of over 260 archival journal publications and three monographs in these fields, and together with L.A. Bergman and D.M. McFarland co-directs the Linear and Nonlinear Dynamics and Vibrations Laboratory at UIUC (http://lndvl.mechse.illinois.edu).