Vibration protection systems for operator seats with two-segment piecewise-linear static force characteristic

Ground transport and technological machines are exposed to significant vibrations and impacts during operation. Therefore, the task of protecting their operators from these effects is relevant. In this work, we investigated non-harmonic impulse effects on the seat system with the operator in the form of upward or downward movement with a constant speed, which begins at zero time from the rest state of the system. A model computational verification of the made assumption that the vibration protection system of the seat with an asymmetric force characteristic is capable of providing better protection compared to systems with a symmetric linear static force characteristic was carried out. In the stud-ied single-mass vibration protection system of the seat on the vibration protection suspension with one translational degree of freedom, a piecewise linear two-segment force characteristic with different angles of inclination of the segments in the positive and negative areas of the values of the local coordinate of deformations of the vibration protection mechanism was used. Asymmetric kinematic excitation of the system motion was performed by giving the base a linear mo-tion in the vertical direction at a constant speed at the initial moment. In the computational experiment, the slope coefficients of the static force characteristic seg-ments in the positive and negative ranges of the local coordinate values were varied. The maximum corrected acceleration of the seat was used as an indicator for assessing the effectiveness of protection. The indicator was averaged for raising and lowering the seat base with the same speed. Vibration protection systems with single-segment and two-segment force characteristics were compared. Functional dependencies of the maximum corrected acceleration on the average maximum deformations of the vibration protection mechanism of the seat are given for the calculated cases of raising and lowering the base. The assumption about the advantage of vibration protection systems with an asymmetric force characteristic is confirmed. With small external impacts, the decrease in the maximum correct-ed acceleration is insignificant, with an increase in external impacts it is more significant.