A non-traditional variant nonlinear energy sink for vibration suppression and energy harvesting

•A non-traditional nonlinear energy sink (NES) is proposed for the purpose of vibration suppression and energy harvesting.•A multi-objective optimization is conducted to examine the trade-off between vibration suppression and energy harvesting.•The optimal performance of the proposed non-traditional NES is compared with that of an optimally tuned non-traditional TMD.•An experimental study is conducted to validate the simulation results.