On the Escape of a Strongly Damped Particle Chain from a Potential Well under Poly-harmonic Excitation

Escape dynamics of a damped n-particle system in a truncated quadratic potential well under poly-harmonic excitation is investigated. It is assumed that the excitation frequencies are tuned to the natural modal frequencies of the relative motions and the modal frequency of the center of mass on the bottom of the potential well. Although the escape is an essentially non-stationary process, the critical forcing amplitude strongly depends on the stationary amplitudes of the relative vibrations within the n particles. The characteristic escape curve for the critical force moves up with the increasing relative vibrations.