Nonlinear bifurcations of damped visco-elastic planar beams under simultaneous gravitational and follower forces.
Angelo Luongo, Francesco D’Annibale
The mechanical behavior of a non-conservative non-linear beam, internally and externally damped, undergoing codimension-1 (static or dynamic) and codimension-2 (double-zero) bifurcations, is analyzed. The system consists of a purely flexible, planar, visco-elastic beam, fixed at one end, loaded at the tip by a follower force and a dead load, acting simultaneously. An integro-differential equation of motion in the transversal displacement, with relevant boundary conditions, is derived. Then, the linear stability diagram of the trivial rectilinear configuration is built-up in the space of the two loading parameters. Emphasis is given to the role of the two damping coefficients on the critical scenario. Attention is then focused on the double-zero bifurcation, for which a post-critical analysis is carried out without any a-priori discretization. An adapted version of the Multiple Scale Method, based on a fractional series expansion in the perturbation parameter, is employed to derive the bifurcation equations. Finally, bifurcation diagrams and bifurcation charts are evaluated, able to illustrate the system behavior around the codimension-2 bifurcation point.