Identification of piecewise-linear mechanical oscillators via Bayesian model selection and parameter estimation

The problem of identifying single degree-of-freedom (SDOF) nonlinear mechanical oscillators with piecewise-linear (PWL) restoring forces is considered. PWL nonlinear systems are a class of models that specify or approximate nonlinear systems via a set of locally-linear maps, each defined over different operating regions. They are useful in modelling hybrid phenomena common in practical situations, such as, systems with different modes of operation, or systems whose dynamics change because of physical limits or thresholds. However, identifying PWL models can be a challenging task when the number of operating regions and their partitions are unknown. This paper formulates the identification of oscillators with PWL restoring forces as a task of concurrent model selection and parameter estimation, where the selection of the number of linear regions is treated as a model selection task and identifying the associated system parameters as a task of parameter estimation. In this study, PWL maps in restoring forces with up to four regions are considered, and the task of model selection and parameter estimation task is addressed in a Bayesian framework. A likelihood-free Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) scheme is followed, which is easy to implement and provides a simplified way of doing model selection. The proposed approach has been demonstrated using two numerical examples and an experimental study, where ABC has been used to select models and identify parameters from among four SDOF PWL systems with different number of PWL regions. The results demonstrate the flexibility of using the proposed Bayesian approach for identifying the correct model and parameters of PWL systems, in addition to furnishing uncertainty estimates of the identified parameters.