Free-Vibration Analysis of Rotating Beams by a Variable-Order Finite-Element Method

The free vibration of rotating beams is analyzed by means of a finite-element method of variable order. This method entails displacement functions that are a complete power series of a variable number of terms. The terms are arranged so that the generalized coordinates are composed of displacements and slopes at the element extremities and, additionally, displacements at certain points within the element. The displacement is assumed to be analytic within an element and thus can be approximated to any degree of accuracy desired by a complete power series. Numerical results are presented for uniform beams with zero and nonzero hub radii, tapered beams, and a nonuniform beam with discontinuities. Since the present method reduces to a conventional beam finite-element method for a cubic displacement function, the results are compared and found to be superior to the conventional results in terms of accuracy for a given number of degrees of freedom. Indeed, essentially exact eigenvalues and eigenvectors are obtained with this technique, which is far more rapidly convergent than other approaches in the literature.