Nonlinear vibration of a curved beam under uniform base harmonic excitation with quadratic and cubic nonlinearities

This paper presents nonlinear vibration analysis of a curved beam subject to uniform base harmonic excitation with both quadratic and cubic nonlinearities. The Galerkin method is employed to discretize the governing equations. A high-dimensional model that can take nonlinear model coupling into account is derived, and the incremental harmonic balance (IHB) method is employed to obtain the steady-state response of the curved beam. The cases investigated include softening stiffness, hardening stiffness and modal energy transfer. The stability of the periodic solutions for given parameters is determined by the multi-variable Floquet theory using Hsus method. Particular attention is paid to the anti-symmetric response with and without excitation, as the excitation frequency is close to the first and third natural frequencies of the system. The results obtained with the IHB method compare very well with those obtained via numerical integration. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.