Abstract: Inspired by the safe landing of cats falling from high altitudes, a bionic flexible rubber bushing structure is proposed and its motion characteristics are systematically studied to explore its potential application in the suppression of vibration. The convex hull structure on the bushing surface is abstracted from the cat’s claw pad, and the hyper-viscoelastic model is selected as the constitutive model of the rubber material. In addition, the design with the best vibration damping effect is finally obtained by reasonably adjusting the amount of radial compression and distribution of bionic structures. Finally, under the same conditions, the test results of the dynamic characteristics of the bushing verify the accuracy of the simulation results. Research results show that the convex hull bionic structure designed in this paper can effectively change the motion characteristics of the rubber bushing under various working conditions, which provides new inspiration or potential possibility for the design of rubber bushing in the future.

Key words: Rubber bushing , · Bionic design , · Finite element analysis , · Vibration isolator , · Radial compression