Surface effect on the nonlinear forced vibration of cantilevered nanobeams

• A nonlinear model is proposed for cantilevered nanobeams with consideration of surface effect.
• Positive residual surface stress would decrease the natural frequencies.
• The nonlinear nanobeam system exhibits both hardening and softening behaviors.

The nonlinear forced vibration behavior of a cantilevered nanobeam is investigated in this paper, essentially considering the effect due to the surface elastic layer. The governing equation of motion for the nano-cantilever is derived, with consideration of the geometrical nonlinearity and the effects of additional flexural rigidity and residual stress of the surface layer. Then, the nonlinear partial differential equation (PDE) is discretized into a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) by means of the Galerkin’s technique. It is observed that surface effects on the natural frequency of the nanobeam is of significance, especially for the case when the aspect ratio of the nanobeam is large. The nonlinear resonant dynamics of the nanobeam system is evaluated by varying the excitation frequency around the fundamental resonance, showing that the nanobeam would display hardening-type behavior and hence the frequency-response curves bend to the right in the presence of positive residual surface stress. However, with the negative residual surface stress, this hardening-type behavior can be shifted to a softening-type one which becomes even more evident with increase of the aspect ratio parameter. It is also demonstrated that the combined effects of the residual stress and aspect ratio on the maximum amplitude of the nanobeam may be pronounced.