Large amplitude vibration analysis of composite beams: Simple closed-form solutions

Large amplitude vibration analysis of laminated composite beam with axially immovable ends is investigated with symmetric and asymmetric layup orientations by using the Rayleigh–Ritz (R–R) method. The displacement fields used in the analytical formulation are coupled by using the homogeneous governing static axial equilibrium equation of the beam. Geometric nonlinearity of von-Karman type is considered which accounts for the membrane stretching action of the beam. The simple closed-form solutions are presented for the nonlinear harmonic radian frequency as function of central amplitude of the beam using the R–R method. The nonlinear harmonic radian frequency results obtained from the closed-form solutions of the R–R method in general show good agreement with the results obtained from simple iterative finite element formulation. Furthermore, the closed-form expressions are corrected for the harmonic motion assumption from the available literature results on the existence of quadratic and cubic nonlinearity. It is interesting to note that the composite beams can result in asymmetric frequency vs. amplitude curves depending upon the nature of direction of displacement in contrast to isotropic beams which exhibit cubic nonlinearity only and leads to symmetric frequency vs. amplitude curves with respect to sign of the amplitude.