Design and experiments of a quasi–zero-stiffness isolator with a noncircular cam-based negative-stiffness mechanism

This article presents a quasi–zero-stiffness isolator with a cam-based negative-stiffness mechanism, where the cam has a user-defined noncircular profile to generate negative stiffness to counterbalance the positive stiffness of the vertical spring and yield the quasi–zero-stiffness characteristic around the equilibrium position. Unlike previous studies, the proposed quasi–zero-stiffness isolator has the preferable feature that the desired cubic restoring force can be directly obtained through the well-designed profile of the cam in the negative-stiffness mechanism with the friction considered during the model design, rather than through the Taylor expansion and friction-ignoring assumption, which can avoid the approximation error between the theoretical design and the specific realization. The pure-cubic nonlinear differential equation of motion of the quasi–zero-stiffness isolator is derived and solved with the harmonic balance method, followed by the discussion of the relevant dynamic characteristics. Experimental studies are carried out based on the physical prototype of the quasi–zero-stiffness isolator. The results show that the quasi–zero-stiffness isolator can greatly extend the isolation frequency bandwidth and has a much lower resonance peak. In the low-frequency band, the quasi–zero-stiffness isolator greatly outperforms the corresponding linear system but is equivalent or even inferior in the high-frequency range with the increase of excitation force.