Dynamics of a Flexible Cantilever Beam Carrying a Moving Mass

The motion of a flexible cantilever beam carrying a moving spring-mass system is investigated. The beam is assumed to be an Euler–Bernouli beam. The motion of the system is described by a set of two nonlinear coupled partial differential equations where the coupling terms have to be evaluated at the position of the mass. The nonlinearities arise due to the coupling between the mass and the beam. Due to the nonlinearities the system exhibits internal resonance which is investigated in this work. The equations of motion are solved numerically using the Rayleigh–Ritz method and an automatic ODE solver. An approximate solution using the perturbation method of multiple scales is also obtained.