Determination of the steady state response of a Timoshenko beam of varying cross-section by use of the spline interpolation technique

The steady state response of an internally damped Timoshenko beam of varying cross-section to a sinusoidally varying point force is determined by use of the spline interpolation technique. For this purpose, with the beam divided into small elements, the response of each element is expressed by a quintic spline function with unknown coefficients. The response is obtained by determining these coefficients so that the spline function satisfies the equation of motion of the beam at each dividing point and also satisfies the boundary conditions at both ends. In this case, the slope due to pure bending of the beam is conveniently adopted as the function essentially expressing the response, from which the transverse deflection, driving point impedance, transfer impedance and force transmissibility of the beam are derived. The method is applied to cantilever beams with linearly, parabolically and exponentially varying rectangular cross-sections; these responses of the beams are calculated numerically and the effects of the varying cross-section on them are studied.