Excessive vibrations are detrimental to a mechanical system’s structural integrity, performance and production quality/output. Emerging design trends incorporate light and slender material, reconfigurable and modular assemblies, and have changing loads and propulsion. This leads to vibration susceptible designs with uncertain, time-varying vibratory behavior. To reduce excessive vibrations, a passive device called a dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) is connected to the mechanical system (the ‘host system’). Conventional DVAs are simple devices that mimic the vibration properties of the host system but will only mitigate vibrations in a narrow frequency bandwidth. The conventional DVAs cannot meet the demands of the vibrations in emerging designs. These vibrations have a rich & time-varying frequency spectrum. In this project, we will develop for the first time a generic methodology to design performant DVAs with as few components as possible for reconfigurable assemblies. The performance of the DVA is amplified by investigating novel self-tuning nonlinear connections characteristics between the DVA and host system and by exploiting frequency distorting vibration mechanisms. As a proof-of-concept, we will build a reconfigurable mechanical host system and realize a DVA for this system designed with the developed methodologies. The results of this work will be the fundamental base for DVAs of the future with an enormous potential for academic and valorization follow-up projects.