DQM large amplitude vibration of composite beams on nonlinear elastic foundations with restrained edges

This paper presents an efficient and accurate differential quadrature (DQ) large amplitude free vibration analysis of laminated composite thin beams on nonlinear elastic foundation. Beams under consideration have elastically restrained against rotation and in-plane immovable edges. Elastic foundation has cubic nonlinearity with shearing layer. We impose the boundary conditions directly into the governing equations in spite of the conventional DQ method and without any extra efforts. A direct iterative method is used to solve the nonlinear eigenvalue system of equations after transforming the governing equations into the frequency domain. The fast rate of convergence of the method is shown and their accuracy is demonstrated by comparing the results with those for limit cases, i.e. beams with classical boundary conditions, available in the literature. Besides, we develop a finite element program to verify the results of the presented DQ approach and to show its high computational efficiency. The effects of different parameters on the ratio of nonlinear to linear natural frequency of beams are studied.