A novel quasi-zero stiffness vibration isolator based on hybrid bistable composite laminate

Abstract

In many conceptual designs of quasi-zero stiffness (QZS) vibration isolators, the negative stiffness elements are very inefficient in terms of weight and volume.This is because they often need to attach additional structural components, and require external constraints or forces to pre-stress some particular components.As a consequence, the volume and weight of the QZS vibration isolators increase to unacceptable levels for many practical applications, such as space equipment and aviation crafts.In this study, a novel QZS vibration isolator that applies bistable composite laminates as the negative stiffness element is proposed and designed to meet the practical requirements.This novel design of the QZS vibration isolator has a greatly simplified structural geometry forms, due to the inherent negative stiffness of bistable composite laminates.The mechanism of this novel QZS vibration isolator mainly lies in the ingenious use of negative stiffness properties of bistable composite laminates.Its structural performance is analyzed and simulated using the finite element methods in Abaqus.The numerical simulation results successfully approve the design principle and outperformed characteristics of this proposed novel design of QZS vibration isolator.