Identification of mode couplings in nonlinear vibrations of the steelpan

Abstract

The vibrations and sounds produced by two notes of a double second steelpan are investigated, the main objective being to quantify the nonlinear energy exchanges occurring between vibration modes that are responsible of the peculiar sound of the instrument. A modal analysis first reveals the particular tuning of the modes and the systematic occurence of degenerate modes, from the second one, this feature being a consequence of the tuning and the mode localization. Forced vibrations experiments are then performed to follow precisely the energy exchange between harmonics of the vibration and thus quantify properly the mode couplings. In particular, it is found that energy exchanges are numerous, resulting in complicated frequency response curves even for very small levels of vibration amplitude. Simple models displaying 1:2:2 and 1:2:4 internal resonance are then fitted to the measurements, allowing to identify the values of the nonlinear quadratic coupling coefficients resulting from the geometric nonlinearity. The identified 1:2:4 model is finally used to recover the time domain variations of an impacted note in normal playing condition, resulting in an excellent agreement for the temporal behaviour of the first four harmonics.