  A beam-slider system is considered whose passive self-adaption relies on an
intricate locomotion process involving both frictional and unilateral contact.
The system also exploits geometric nonlinearity to achieve broadband efficacy.
The dynamics of the system take place on three distinct time scales: On the
fast time scale of the harmonic base excitation are the vibrations and the
locomotion cycle. On the slow time scale, the slider changes its position along
the beam, and the overall vibration level varies. Finally, on an intermediate
time scale, strong modulations of the vibration amplitude may take place. In
the present work, first, an analytical approximation of the beam's response on
the slow time scale is derived as function of the slider position, which is a
crucial prerequisite for identifying the main drivers of the slider's
locomotion. Then, the most important forms of locomotion are described and
approximations of their individual contribution to the overall slider transport
are estimated. Finally, the theoretical results are compared against numerical
results obtained from an experimentally validated model.
