Analysis of longitudinal oscillations in a vertically moving cable subject to nonclassical boundary conditions

Abstract

In this paper, we study a model of a flexible hoisting system, in which external disturbances exerted on the boundary can induce large vibrations, and so damage to the performance of the system. The dynamics is described by a wave equation on a slow time-varying spatial domain with a small harmonic boundary excitation at one end of the cable, and a moving mass at the other end. Due to the slow variation of the cable length, a singular perturbation problem arises. By using an averaging method, and an interior layer analysis, many resonance manifolds are detected. Further, a three time-scales perturbation method is used to construct formal asymptotic approximations of the solutions. It turns out that for a given boundary disturbance frequency, many oscillation modes jump up from order ε amplitudes to order ε amplitudes, where ε is a small parameter with 0<ε<<1. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to verify the obtained analytical results.