On the stability of a deep beam subjected to nonconservative and dissipative forces

Abstract

For the case of a simply supported deep beam subjected to a transverse follower load applied at its center, the dependence of the critical flutter load upon the effects of internal and external damping and warping rigidity is considered. A Kelvin-Voigt solid is assumed, the external damping is assumed to be proportional to the velocity of the beam at a point, and, due to the nature of the nonconservative applied load, the flexural and torsional deformations of the beam are coupled. The resulting boundary value problem is nonself-adjoint in character, and the stability problem is solved in an approximate manner by means of an adjoint variational principle. Several graphs are presented to demonstrate the effect of the various damping and rigidity parameters on the value of the critical flutter load. The numerical results obtained here reveal that in the absence of external damping, the value of the critical flutter load becomes arbitrarily small as the internal damping parameter associated with flexure tends to zero.