Transverse vibration and buckling of a cantilevered beam with tip body under constant axial base acceleration

The planar transverse bending behavior of a uniform cantilevered beam with rigid tip body subject to constant axial base acceleration was analyzed. The beam is inextensible and capable of small elastic transverse bending deformations only. Two classes of tip bodies are recognized: (1) mass centers located along the beam tip tangent line; and (2) mass centers with arbitrary offset towards the beam attachment point. The steady state response is studied for the beam end condition cases: free, tip mass, tip body with restricted mass center offset, and tip body with arbitrary mass center offset. The first three cases constitute classical Euler buckling problems, and the characteristic equation for the critical loads/accelerations are determined. For the last case a unique steady state solution exists. The free vibration response is examined for the two classes of tip body. The characteristic equation, eigenfunctions and their orthogonality properties are obtained for the case of restricted mass center offset. The vibration problem is nonhomogeneous for the case of arbitrary mass center offset. The exact solution is obtained as a sum of the steady state solution and a superposition of simple harmonic motions.