ABSTRACT
Maxwell elements have been commonly used for modelling elastomeric vibration isolators. Their most common form of usage is in Maxwell-Voigt (MV) models with one Maxwell element or in Maxwell-Maxwell-Voigt (MMV) models with two Maxwell elements. These models have been found to represent a vibration isolation system well in time domain and frequency domain. This paper examines the influence of nonlinear stiffness in MV and MMV models. The main aim of introducing stiffness nonlinearity is to overcome the trade-off between mitigation of resonance peaks and the reduction of transmissibility at relatively higher frequencies. The investigation of nonlinear vibration isolators is in response to an increasing demand in multiple applications where it is important to meet conflicting design requirements with several constraints while providing isolation over a large range of excitation frequencies. It is observed that one of the two models is reasonably successful in overcoming some design tradeoffs for vibration isolation.
