Abstract
This paper is dedicated to explore the nonlinear dynamic effects of damping washers on the performance of automatic ball balancer (ABB) system installed in optical disc drives. A complete dynamic model of the ABB including nonlinearity of the damping washers is established. The method of multiple scales is applied to find all possible steady-state ball positions and stabilities. It is found that "soft" nonlinear washers have better working conditions than the "hard" ones. ©Freund Publishing House Ltd.