Dynamic response and sensitivity analysis for mechanical systems with clearance joints and parameter uncertainties using Chebyshev polynomials method

A mechanical system with clearance joints exhibits non-linear characteristics. Even a small variation of one parameter may lead to a drastic change of the overall system response. The coupling of clearance and uncertainty would therefore significantly influence the system performance. In this paper, an analysis method for dynamic response and parameter sensitivity of mechanical systems is proposed with the consideration of both clearance joints and uncertainties. In this method, elements of a revolute clearance joint are modeled as colliding bodies, where continuous contact force model and modified friction force model are employed to describe the impact-contact behavior. The clearance joint model is then coupled with the system motion equations to obtain the system dynamic response. Furthermore, by introducing the multi-dimensional Chebyshev polynomials approach, dependence of the system dynamic response on its parameters can be established. The bounds of the dynamic response could be obtained by using the interval operations, and the parameter sensitivity is interpreted as the rate of the change of the system dynamic response with respect to the parameter variation, revealing the contribution of each parameter on the dynamic performance. Finally, dynamics of a crank-slider mechanism with clearance and uncertainties is investigated. Results show that a larger clearance would cause severe oscillation in the response bounds and larger expansion of the interval length, and clearance effect restraint zones can be obtained through the sensitivity analysis, where the expansion of the response interval length could be reduced. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.