Triply coupled vibrations of thin-walled open cross-section beams including rotary inertia effects

An exact analytical method is presented for predicting the undamped natural frequencies of beams with thin-walled open cross-sections having no axis of symmetry. The governing differential equations give a characteristic equation of the 12th order with real coefficients. The roots are found numerically and the exact boundary conditions are considered especially for free ends to obtain natural frequencies. The simpler cases of neglecting cross-sectional warping and/or rotary inertia are also dealt with. It is seen that when the effect of rotary inertia is neglected significant errors incur for some boundary conditions, cross-section thicknesses and mode numbers. This is more profound when the warping effect is taken into account. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.