Identification techniques applied to a passive elasto-magnetic suspension

The paper presents an experimental passive elasto-magnetic suspension based on rare-earth permanent magnets, characterized by negligible dependence on mass of its natural frequency. The nonlinear behaviour of this system, equipped with a traditional linear elastic spring coupled to a magnetic spring, is analysed in time domain, for non-zero initial conditions, and in frequency domain, by applying sweep excitations to the test rig base. The dynamics of the system is very complex in dependence of the magnetic contribution, showing both hardening behaviour in the elasto-magnetic setup, and softening motion amplitude dependent behaviour in the purely magnetic case. Hence it is necessary to adopt nonlinear identification techniques, such as non-parametric restoring force mapping method and direct parametric estimation technique, in order to identify the system parameters in the different configurations. Finally, it is discussed the ability of identified versus analytical models in reproducing the nonlinear dependency of frequency on motion amplitude and the presence of jump phenomen. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.