Nonlinear response of shear deformable beams on tensionless nonlinear viscoelastic foundation under moving loads

In this paper, a boundary element method is developed for the geometrically nonlinear response of shear deformable beams of simply or multiply connected constant cross-section, traversed by moving loads, resting on tensionless nonlinear three-parameter viscoelastic foundation, undergoing moderate large deflections under general boundary conditions. The beam is subjected to the combined action of arbitrarily distributed or concentrated transverse moving loading as well as to axial loading. To account for shear deformations, the concept of shear deformation coefficients is used. Three boundary value problems are formulated with respect to the transverse displacement, to the axial displacement and to a stress functions and solved using the Analog Equation Method, a Boundary Element based method. Application of the boundary element technique yields a system of nonlinear Differential-Algebraic Equations, which is solved using an efficient time discretization scheme, from which the transverse and axial displacements are computed. The evaluation of the shear deformation coefficient is accomplished from the aforementioned stress function using only boundary integration. Analyses are performed to illustrate, wherever possible, the accuracy of the developed method, to investigate the effects of various parameters, such as the load velocity, load frequency, shear deformation, foundation nonlinearity, damping, on the beam displacements and stress resultants and to examine how the consideration of shear and axial compression affects the response of the system.