Non-linear non-planar vibrations of geometrically imperfect inextensional beams. Part II—Bifurcation analysis under base excitations

The non-linear non-planar steady-state responses of a near-square cantilevered beam (a special case of inextensional beams) with general imperfection under harmonic base excitation is investigated. By applying the combination of the multiple scales method and the Galerkin procedure to two non-linear integro-differential equations derived in part I, two modulation non-linear coupled first-order differential equations are obtained for the case of a primary resonance with a one-to-one internal resonance. The modulation equations contain linear imperfection-induced terms in addition to cubic geometric and inertial terms. Variations of the steady-state response amplitude curves with different parameters are presented. Bifurcation analyses of fixed points show that the influence of geometric imperfection on the steady-state responses can be significant to a great extent although the imperfection is small. The phenomenon of frequency island generation is also observed.     

On non-linear dynamics of a coupled electro-mechanical system

Electro-mechanical devices are an example of coupled multi-disciplinary weakly non-linear systems. Dynamics of such systems is described in this paper by means of two mutually coupled differential equations. The first one, describing an electrical system, is of the first order and the second one, for mechanical system, is of the second order. The governing equations are coupled via linear and weakly non-linear terms. A classical perturbation method, a method of multiple scales, is used to find a steady-state response of the electro-mechanical system exposed to a harmonic close-resonance mechanical excitation. The results are verified using a numerical model created in MATLAB Simulink environment. Effect of non-linear terms on dynamical response of the coupled system is investigated; the backbone and envelope curves are analyzed. The two phenomena, which exist in the electro-mechanical system: (a)?detuning (i.e. a natural frequency variation) and (b)?damping (i.e. a decay in the amplitude of vibration), are analyzed further. An applicability range of the mathematical model is assessed.     

Non-linear response of a beam to periodic loading

The steady state response of a non-linear beam under periodic excitation is investigated. The non-linearity is attributed to the membrane tension effect which is induced in the beam when the deflection is not small in comparison to its thickness. The effects of multimode participation are investigated for simply supported and clamped boundary conditions. The finite element technique is used to formulate the non-linear differential equations of the straight beam and the method of averaging is used to obtain an approximate solution to the non-linear equations under harmonic loading. An analog computer was used to simulate the non-linear beam equation which was subjected to harmonic excitation. The agreement between theoretical and experimental values is reasonably good.     

Nonlinear vibration of viscoelastic sandwich plates under narrow-band random excitations

The effect of the narrow-band random excitation on the non-linear response of sandwich plates with an incompressible viscoelastic core is investigated. To model the core, both the transverse shear strains and rotations are assumed to be moderate and the displacement field in the thickness direction is assumed to be linear for the in-plane components and quadratic for the out-of-plane components. In connection to the moderate shear strains considered for the core, a non-linear single-integral viscoelastic model is also used for constitutive modeling of the core. The fifth-order perturbation method is used together with the Galerkin method to transform the nine partial differential equations to a single ordinary integro-differential equation. Converting the lower-order viscoelastic integral term to the differential form, the fifth-order method of multiple scale is applied together with the method of reconstitution to obtain the stochastic phase-amplitude equations. The Fokker–Planck–Kolmogorov equation corresponding to these equations is then solved by the finite difference method, to determine the probability density of the response. The variation of root mean square and marginal probability density of the response amplitude with excitation deterministic frequency and magnitudes are investigated and the bimodal distribution is recognized in narrow ranges of excitation frequency and magnitude.     

Non-linear dynamic stability of damped Beck's column with variable cross-section

In this paper the non-linear dynamic stability of Beck's column with variable mass and stiffness properties in the presence of damping (both internal and external) is investigated using a complete non-linear dynamic analysis. This approach permits the examination of the global stability of the system in contrast to the static non-linear one, which, though more economical in computational cost, is associated only with the loss of local stability via flutter or divergence. The governing equations describing the dynamic response are derived in terms of the displacements taking also into account the axial deformation, which has a striking influence on the critical load. Since the cross-sectional properties of the beam vary along its axis, the resulting coupled non-linear differential equations have variable coefficients. Their solution is achieved using the analog equation method (AEM) of Katsikadelis. Besides its accuracy and effectiveness, this method overcomes the shortcoming of a FEM solution, which may experience lack of convergence. Interesting conclusions are drawn. The important, however, finding is that the inclusion of the axial deformation affects highly the critical load of Beck's column with varying cross-sectional properties, while it leaves it unaltered for Beck's column with uniform cross-section.     

Non-linear longitudinal vibrations of non-slender piezoceramic rods

Characteristic non-linear effects can be observed, when piezoceramics are excited using weak electric fields. In experiments with longitudinal vibrations of piezoceramic rods, the behavior of a softening Duffing-oscillator including jump phenomena and multiple stable amplitude responses at the same excitation frequency and voltage is observed. Another phenomenon is the decrease of normalized amplitude responses with increasing excitation voltages. For such small stresses and weak electric fields as applied in the experiments, piezoceramics are usually described by linear constitutive equations around an operating point in the butterfly hysteresis curve. The non-linear effects under consideration were, e.g. observed and described by Beige and Schmidt [1,2], who investigated longitudinal plate vibrations using the piezoelectric 31-effect. They modeled these non-linearities using higher order quadratic and cubic elastic and electric terms. Typical non-linear effects, e.g. dependence of the resonance frequency on the amplitude, superharmonics in spectra and a non-linear relation between excitation voltage and vibration amplitude were also observed e.g. by von Wagner et al. [3] in piezo-beam systems. In the present paper, the work is extended to longitudinal vibrations of non-slender piezoceramic rods using the piezoelectric 33-effect. The non-linearities are modeled using an extended electric enthalpy density including non-linear quadratic and cubic elastic terms, coupling terms and electric terms. The equations of motion for the system under consideration are derived via the Ritz method using Hamilton's principle. An extended kinetic energy taking into consideration the transverse velocity is used to model the non-slender rods. The equations of motion are solved using perturbation techniques. In a second step, additional dissipative linear and non-linear terms are used in the model. The non-linear effects described in this paper may have strong influence on the relation between excitation voltage and response amplitude whenever piezoceramic actuators and structures are excited at resonance.     

An analytical study of the non-linear vibrations of cylindrical shells

The primary resonance response of simply supported circular cylindrical shells is investigated using the perturbation method. Donnell's non-linear shallow-shell theory is used to derive the governing partial differential equations of motion. The Galerkin technique is then employed to transform the equations of motion into a set of temporal ordinary differential equations. Considering only the primary resonance case, the method of multiple scales is used to study the periodic solutions and their stability. The necessary and sufficient conditions for appearance of the so-called companion mode are also discussed. To this end, a range of the possible multi-mode solution is obtained for response and excitation amplitudes and also excitation frequency as a function of damping, geometry and material properties of the shell. Parametric studies are performed to illustrate the effect of different values of thickness, length and material composition on the possibility of the companion mode participation in primary resonance response.     

Vibration control of a cantilever beam of varying orientation

We investigate the problem of suppressing the vibrations of a non-linear system with a cantilever beam of varying orientation subject to parametric and direct excitation. It is known that the growth of the response is limited by non-linearity. Therefore, vibration control and high-amplitude response suppressions of the first mode of a cantilever beam can be performed using a simple non-linear feedback law. This control law is based on cubic velocity feedback. The method of multiples scales is used to construct first-order non-linear ordinary differential equations governing the modulation of the amplitudes and phases. The stability and effects of different system parameters are studied numerically.     

Non-linear shear vibrations of piezoceramic actuators

A wide range of non-linear effects are observed in piezoceramic materials. For small stresses and weak electric fields, piezoceramics are usually described by linearized constitutive equations around an operating point. However, typical non-linear vibration behavior is observed at weak electric fields near resonance frequency excitations of the piezoceramics. This non-linear behavior is observed in terms of a softening behavior and the decrease of normalized amplitude response with increase in excitation voltage. In this paper the authors have attempted to model this behavior using higher order cubic conservative and non-conservative terms in the constitutive equations. Two-dimensional kinematic relations are assumed, which satisfy the considered reduced set of constitutive relations. Hamilton's principle for the piezoelectric material is applied to obtain the non-linear equation of motion of the piezoceramic rectangular parallelepiped specimen, and the Ritz method is used to discretize it. The resulting equation of motion is solved using a perturbation technique. Linear and non-linear parameters for the model are identified. The results from the theoretical model and the experiments are compared. The non-linear effects described in this paper may have strong influence on the design of the devices, e.g. ultrasonic motors, which utilize the piezoceramics near the resonance frequency excitation.     

Averaging method for the solution of non-linear differential equations with periodic non-harmonic solutions

While Krylov and Bogolyubov used harmonic functions in their averaging method for the approximate solution of weakly non-linear differential equations with oscillatory solution, we apply a similar averaging technique using Jacobi elliptic functions. These functions are also periodic and are exact solutions of strongly non-linear differential equations. The method is used to solve non-linear differential equations with linear and non-linear small dissipative terms and/or with time dependent parameters. It is also shown that quite general dissipative terms can be transformed into time-dependent parameters. As a special example, the Langevin (collisional) equation of motion of electrons in a neutralizing ion background under the influence of a time and space-dependent electric field is presented. The method may also be used for non-linear control theory, dynamic and parametric stabilization of non-linear oscillations in plasma physics, etc.     

Monte Carlo simulation in the stochastic analysis of non-linear systems under external stationary Poisson white noise input

A method for the evaluation of the probability density function (p.d.f.) of the response process of non-linear systems under external stationary Poisson white noise excitation is presented. The method takes advantage of the great accuracy of the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) in evaluating the first two moments of the response process by considering just few samples. The quasi-moment neglect closure is used to close the infinite hierarchy of the moment differential equations of the response process. Moreover, in order to determine the higher order statistical moments of the response, the second-order probabilistic information given by MCS in conjunction with the quasi-moment neglect closure leads to a set of linear differential equations. The quasi-moments up to a given order are used as partial probabilistic information on the response process in order to find the p.d.f. by means of the C-type Gram-Charlier series expansion.     

Stationary and non-stationary probability density function for non-linear oscillators

A method for the evaluation of the stationary and non-stationary probability density function of non-linear oscillators subjected to random input is presented. The method requires the approximation of the probability density function of the response in terms of C-type Gram-Charlier series expansion. By applying the weighted residual method, the Fokker-Planck equation is reduced to a system of non-linear first order ordinary differential equations, where the unknowns are the coefficients of the series expansion. Furthermore, the relationships between the A-type and C-type Gram-Charlier series coefficient are derived.     

Control of primary and subharmonic resonances of a Duffing oscillator via non-linear energy sink

The use of non-linear energy sink to passively control vibrations of a non-linear main structure under the effect of bi-frequency harmonic excitation is addressed here. The excitation is assumed to induce both 1:1 and 1:3 resonance, and the response of the system is studied after using the Multiple Scale/Harmonic Balance Method, applied to obtain amplitude modulation equations in the slow time scale. The efficiency of the non-linear energy sink to reduce or suppress vibrations of the main structure is finally discussed.     

Principal parametric resonances of non-linear mechanical system with two-frequency and self-excitations

The principal parametric resonance of a single-degree-of-freedom system with non-linear two-frequency parametric and self-excitations is investigated. In particular, the case in which the parametric excitation terms with close frequencies is examined. The method of multiple scales is used to determine the equations that describe to first-order the modulation of the amplitude and phase. Qualitative analysis and asymptotic expansion techniques are employed to predict the existence of steady state responses. Stability is investigated. The effect of damping, magnitudes of non-linear excitation and self-excitation are analyzed.     

Non-linear flexural-flexural-torsional-extensional dynamics of beams—I. Formulation

The non-linear differential equations of motion, and boundary conditions, for Euler-Bernoulli beams able to experience flexure along two principal directions (and, thus, flexure in any direction in space), torsion and extension are formulated. The beam's material is assumed to be Hookean but its properties may vary along its span. The nonlinearities present in the differential equations include contributions from the curvature expression and from inertia terms. A set of differential equations with polynomial nonlinearities to cubic order, suitable for a perturbation analysis of the motion, is also developed and the validity of the inextensional approximation is assessed. The equations developed here reduce to those for an inextensional beam. In Part II of this paper, a specific example of application is analyzed and the results obtained are compared with those available in the literature where several non-linear terms have been neglected a priori.     

Non-linear dynamics of the sandwich double circular plate system

Multi-frequency vibrations of a system of two isotropic circular plates interconnected by a visco-elastic layer that has non-linear characteristics are considered. The considered physical system should be of interest to many researches from mechanical and civil engineering. The first asymptotic approximation of the solutions describing stationary and no stationary behavior, in the regions around the two coupled resonances, is the principal result of the authors. A series of the amplitude-frequency and phase-frequency curves of the two frequency like vibration regimes are presented. That curves present the evolution of the first asymptotic approximation of solutions for different non-linear harmonics obtained by changing external excitation frequencies through discrete as well as continuous values. System of the partial differential equations of the transversal oscillations of the sandwich double circular plate system with visco-non-linear elastic layer, excited by external, distributed, along plate surfaces, excitation are derived and approximately solved for various initial conditions and external excitation properties. System of differential equations of the first order with respect to the amplitudes and the corresponding number of the phases in the first asymptotic averaged approximation are derived for different corresponding multi-frequency non-linear vibration regimes. These equations are analytically and numerically considered in the light of the stationary and no stationary resonant regimes, as well as the multi-non-linear free and forced mode mutual interactions, number of the resonant jumps.     

Stochastic finite element analysis of non-linear plane trusses

—This study considers the responses of geometrically and materially non-linear plane trusses under random excitations. The stress-strain law in the inelastic range is based on an explicit differential equation model. After a total Lagrangian finite element discretization, the nodal displacements satisfy a system of stochastic non-linear ordinary differential equations with right-hand-sides given by random functions of time. The exact solution of the above stochastic differential equation is generally difficult to obtain. To seek an approximate solution with good accuracy and reasonable computational effort, the stochastic linearization method is used to find the first and second statistical moments (i.e. the mean vector and the one-time covariance matrix) of the nodal displacements. Results of simple structures under Gaussian white-noise excitation indicate that the proposed method has good accuracy (generally underestimates the r.m.s. stationary response by 5–14%) and requires only a small fraction of the computation time of the time-history Monte-Carlo method.     

On the accuracy of the multiple scales method for non-linear vibrations of doubly curved shallow shells

Non-linear free and forced vibrations of doubly curved isotropic shallow shells are investigated via multi-modal Galerkin discretization and the method of multiple scales. Donnell’s non-linear shallow shell theory is used and it is assumed that the shell is simply supported with movable edges. By deriving two different forms of the stress function, the equations of motion are reduced to a system of infinite non-linear ordinary differential equations with quadratic and cubic non-linearities. A quadratic relation between the excitation and the fundamental frequency is considered and it is shown that, although in case of hardening non-linearities the results resemble those found via numerical integration or continuation softwares, in case of softening non-linearity the solution breaks down as the amplitude becomes larger than the thickness. Results reveal that, expressing the relation between the excitation and fundamental frequency in this form, which was considered by many researchers as a useful tool in analyzing strong non-linear oscillators, yields in spurious results when the non-linearity becomes of softening type.     

Non-linear dynamics of a flexible single link Cartesian manipulator

The present work deals with the non-linear vibration of a harmonically excited single link roller-supported flexible Cartesian manipulator with a payload. The governing equation of motion of this system is developed using extended Hamilton's principle, which is reduced to the second-order temporal differential equation of motion, by using generalized Galerkin's method. This equation of motion contains both cubic non-linearities of geometric and inertial type in addition to linear forced and non-linear parametric excitation terms. Method of multiple scales is used to solve this non-linear equation and study the stability and bifurcations of the system. Influence of amplitude of the base excitation and mass ratio on the steady state response of the system is investigated for both simple and subharmonic resonance conditions. Critical bifurcation points are determined from the fixed-point responses and periodic, quasi-periodic responses are also found for different system parameters. The results obtained using the perturbation analysis are compared with the previously published experimental work and are found to be in good agreement. This work will be useful for the designer of a flexible manipulator.     

A Volterra series approach to the frequency domain analysis of non-linear viscous Burgers’ equation

In this paper, higher order frequency response functions, based on the Volterra series, are employed to characterise the input-output behaviour of the non-linear viscous Burgers?? equation subject to sinusoidal excitation. First, a formal Volterra series representation for each spatial location is derived for the solution of Burgers?? equation with a boundary condition as the input to the system. Then a systematic method is presented to obtain the higher order frequency kernels of the Volterra series at each spatial location by solving a series of ordinary differential equations. It is shown that the convergence region of the individual harmonics with respect to the magnitude of the input excitation can be estimated by using these higher order kernels. The frequency characteristics of Burgers?? equation is investigated and compared with numerical simulation.