TRANSIENT-RESPONSE OF A MULTISPAN BEAM ON NONSYMMETRIC NONLINEAR SUPPORTS

A multi-span beam on magnetic levitation supportssis of importance in various machines. The electromagnetic support has a strong non-symmetric non-linearity between the levitation force and the displacement. This paper is concerned with a method for analyzing the dynamic response of a multi-span beam on non-symmetric non-linear supports under an unsteady load decaying exponentially with time. In the analysis it is assumed that the non-linear spring system is a group of segments of linear springs, and the expression for the non-linear transient response is derived by use of a combination of Laplace transformation, Fourier series expansion and the residue theorem. Numerical calculations have been carried out for some sample problems, and the effects of non-linearity due to the non-linear supports have been illustrated. © 1990.