Targeted energy transfer (TET) represents the phenomenon where energy in a primary system is irreversibly transferred to a nonlinear energy sink (NES). This only occurs when the initial energy in the primary system is above a critical level. There is a natural asymmetry in the system due to the desire for the NES to be much smaller than the primary structure it is protecting. This asymmetry is also essential from an energy transfer perspective. To explore how the essential asymmetry is related to TET, this work interprets the realization of TET from a symmetry breaking perspective. This is achieved by introducing a symmetrized model with respect to the generically asymmetric original system. Firstly a classic example, which consists of a linear primary system and a nonlinearizable NES, is studied. The backbone curve topology that is necessary to realize TET is explored and it is demonstrated how this topology evolves from the symmetric case. This example is then extended to a more general case, accounting for nonlinearity in the primary system and linear stiffness in the NES. Exploring the symmetry-breaking effect on the backbone curve topologies, enables the regions in the NES parameter space that lead to TET to be identified.

目标能量转移 (TET) 表示主系统中的能量不可逆地转移到非线性能量汇 (NES) 的现象。这仅在初级系统中的初始能量高于临界水平时发生。由于希望 NES 比它所保护的主要结构小得多，系统中存在自然的不对称性。从能量转移的角度来看，这种不对称性也是必不可少的。为了探索基本的不对称性如何与 TET 相关，这项工作从对称性破坏的角度解释了 TET 的实现。这是通过引入关于一般不对称原始系统的对称模型来实现的。首先研究一个由线性初级系统和非线性NES组成的经典例子。探索了实现 TET 所需的主干曲线拓扑，并演示了该拓扑如何从对称情况演变而来。然后将此示例扩展到更一般的情况，考虑到主系统中的非线性和 NES 中的线性刚度。探索对主干曲线拓扑的对称破坏效应，可以识别 NES 参数空间中导致 TET 的区域。