Aircraft wings dynamics suppression by optimal NESs designed through an Efficient stochastic linearisation approach

Non-linear energy sink (NES) is an emerging passive absorber able to mitigate the dynamic response of structures without any external energy supply, resonating with all the modes of the primary structure to control. However, its inherent non-linearities hinder its large-scale use and leads to complicated design procedures. For this purpose, an approximate design approach is herein proposed in a stochastic framework. Since loads are random in nature, the stochastic analysis of non-linear systems may be performed by means of computational intensive techniques such as Monte Carlo simulations (MCS). Alternatively, the Stochastic Linearisation (SL) technique has proven to be an effective tool to investigate the performance of different passive control systems under random loads. Since controlled systems are generally non-classically damped and most of SL algorithms operate recursively, the computational burden required is still large for those problems that make intensive use of SL technique, as optimal design procedures. Herein, a procedure to speed up the Stochastic Linearisation technique is proposed by avoiding or strongly reducing numerical evaluations of response statistics. The ability of the proposed procedure to effectively reduce the computational effort and to reliably design the NES is showed through an application on a well-known case study related to the vibrations mitigation of an aircraft wing.