Multiharmonic Resonance Control Testing of an Internally Resonant Structure

The experimental characterisation of a nonlinear structure is a challenging process, particularly for multiple degree of freedom and continuous structures. Despite attracting much attention from academia, there is much work needed to create processes that can achieve characterisation in timescales suitable for industry, and a key to this is the design of the testing procedure itself. This work proposes a passive testing method that seeks a desired degree of resonance between forcing and response. In this manner, the process automatically seeks data that reveals greater detail of the underlying nonlinear normal modes than a traditional stepped sine method. Furthermore, the method can target multiple harmonics of the fundamental forcing frequency, and is therefore suitable for structures with complex modal interactions. The method is presented with some experimental examples, using a structure with a 3:1 internal resonance.