Improved Analysis of a Propped Cantilever Under Lateral Vibration

Continuous systems are sometimes analysed as lumped masses connected by massless elements. This reduces the structure’s degree of freedom and therefore simplifies the analysis. However this over simplification introduces an error in the analysis and the results are therefore approximate. In this work sections of the vibrating beam were isolated and the equations of the forces causing vibration obtained using the Hamilton’s principle. These forces were applied to the nodes of an equivalent lumped mass beam and the stiffness modification needed for it to behave as a continuous beam obtained. The beam’s stiffness was modified using a set of stiffness modification factors to . It was observed that by applying these factors in the dynamic analysis of the beam using the Lagrange’s equation, we obtain the exact values of the fundamental frequency irrespective of the way the mass of the beam was lumped. From this work we observed that in order to obtain an accurate dynamic response from a lumped mass beam there is need to modify the stiffness composition of the system and no linear modification of the stiffness distribution of lumped mass beams can cause them to be dynamically equivalent to the continuous beams. This is so because the values of the modification factors obtained for each beam segment were not equal. The stiffness modification factors were obtained for elements at different sections of the beam