Investigation of a Novel Tri-Stable Cantilever Beam With Two Magnets

The conventional non-linear tri-stable cantilever beams (TCBs) consisting of permanent magnets have the disadvantages of many magnets and complex parameters. In this paper, a novel TCB is proposed, which contains only two magnets, a ring magnet and a rectangular magnet. Through theoretical analysis and experimental verification of the magnetic force and the system potential function, it is proved that this TCB can have tri-stable characteristics, which provides an effective and simplified design approach for constructing a TCB. The dynamics analysis of this TCB with different structural parameters reveals the mechanism of excitation intensity, potential well depth and potential well spacing on the response of the system.