The thermal effects on high-frequency vibration of beams using energy flow analysis

• A novel energy flow model of beams considering thermal effects is presented.
• The effects of thermal stresses and temperature-dependent material properties are included in the energy governing equation.
• The proposed EFA model is validated against the modal analysis, and good agreements are found.
• The results show that the thermal effects can alter the level of energy density as well as the distribution.

In this paper, the energy flow analysis (EFA) method is developed to predict the high-frequency response of beams in a thermal environment, which is a topic of concern in aerospace and automotive industries. The temperature load applied on the structures can generate thermal stresses and change material properties. The wavenumber and group velocity associated with the in-plane axial force arising from thermal stresses are included in the derivation of the governing energy equation, and the input power is obtained from the derived effective bending stiffness. In addition, effect of temperature-dependent material properties is considered in the EFA model. To verify the proposed formulation, numerical simulations are performed for a pinned–pinned beam in a uniform thermal environment. The EFA results are compared with the modal solutions for various frequencies and damping loss factors, and good correlations are observed. The results show that the spatial distributions and levels of energy density can be affected by the thermal effects, and the vibration response of beams increases with temperature.