Free vibration of triply coupled centrifugally stiffened nonuniform beams, using a refined dynamic finite element method

The application of a Refined Dynamic Finite Element (RDFE) technique to triply coupled vibration of centrifugally stiffened beams is presented. The proposed method is a fusion of the “Galerkin weighted residual” formulation and the Dynamic Stiffness Matrix (DSM) method, where the basis functions of approximation space are assumed to be the closed form solutions of the differential equations governing uncoupled bending and torsional vibrations of the beam. The use of resulting dynamic trigonometric interpolation (shape) functions leads to a frequency dependent stiffness matrix, representing both mass and stiffness properties of the beam element. Assembly of the element matrices and the application of the boundary conditions then leads to a frequency dependent nonlinear eigenproblem. The Wittrick–Williams algorithm is used as a solution technique to compute the natural frequencies and modes of five illustrative example beam configurations, exhibiting doubly and triply coupled vibrations. The discussion of results is followed by some concluding remarks.