In this paper, research on transverse vibrations of axially moving strings and their control is thoroughly reviewed. In the last few decades, there have been extensive studies on analysis and control of transverse vibrations of axially moving strings because of the wide applications of many engineering devices that axially moving strings represent. In the investigations adopting linear models of moving strings, the paper summarizes recent studies on modal analysis, complicatedly constrained strings, coupled vibrations, and parametric vibration, as well as some early results. In the investigations adopting nonlinear models of moving strings, the paper presents the governing equations with large amplitude, and reviews progress on discretized or direct approximate analytical analyses and numerical approaches based on the Galerkin method or the finite difference method. Furthermore, investigations are reported on modeling of damping mechanisms as viscoelastic materials, coupled vibration of power transmission systems, and bifurcation and chaos. The state of the art of active control of moving strings is surveyed on controllability and observability, the Laplace transform domain analysis and the energy analysis, nonlinear vibration control and adaptive vibration control. Finally, future research directions are suggested such as nonlinear vibration of moving strings under complex constraints and couplings, energetics of nonlinear and time-varying strings, bifurcation and chaos in transverse motion of moving strings, control of hybrid systems containing moving strings, robust and adaptive controls of nonlinear moving strings, and experimental investigations. In this review article there are 242 references cited.

Internal resonance is explored as a possible mechanism to enhance vibration-based energy harvesting. An electromagnetic device with snap-through nonlinearity is proposed as an archetype of an internal resonance energy harvester. Based on the equations governing the vibration measured from a stable equilibrium position, the method of multiple scales is applied to derive the amplitude–frequency response relationships of the displacement and the power in the first primary resonances with the two-to-one internal resonance. The amplitude–frequency response curves have two peaks bending to the left and the right, respectively. The numerical simulations support the analytical results. Then the averaged power is calculated under the Gaussian white noise, the narrow-band noise, the colored noise defined by a second-order filter, and the exponentially correlated noise. The results demonstrate numerically that the internal resonance design produces more power than other designs under the Gaussian white noise and the exponentially correlated noise. Besides, the internal resonance energy harvester can outperform the linear energy harvesters with the same natural frequencies and in the same size under Gaussian white noise.