Optimal design of a cantilever subjected to dissipative and non-conservative forces

✍ Scribed by G.L. Anderson

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1974
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 661 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-460X
• DOI: 10.1016/s0022-460x(74)80103-3

✦ Synopsis

The design of a cantilever beam of a given structural weight subjected to a linearly distributed tangential load is investigated with the intention of maximizing the critical flutter load intensity, Q.t. The effects of internal and external damping are included in the partial differential equation of motion. An adjoint variational principle is introduced, the optimality condition is derived, and a variational method is applied to determine approximate values of Q.t with respect to certain design parameters. Numerical results are obtained for uniform and smoothly tapered beams of rectangular and circular cross-section, and the optimal values of Qs were determined by a numerical procedure that automatically computes the maximum value of a function of several parameters. For the same weight, it was found that the optimally designed beam has a significantly larger critical flutter load intensity, depending upon the values of the internal and external damping parameters, than has the corresponding uniform beam.