Flutter instability and other singularity phenomena in symmetric systems via combination of mass distribution and weak damping

The local dynamic instability of autonomous conservative, lumped-mass (discrete) systems, is thoroughly discussed when negligibly small dissipative forces are included. It is shown that such small forces may change drastically the response of these systems. Hence, existing, widely accepted, findings based on the omission of damping could not be valid if damping, being always present in actual systems, is included. More specifically the conditions under which the above systems may experience dynamic bifurcations associated either with a degenerate or a generic Hopf bifurcation are examined in detail by studying the effect of the structure of the damping matrix on the Jacobian eigenvalues. The case whereby this phenomenon may occur before divergence is discussed in connection with the individual or coupling effect of non-uniform mass and stiffness distribution. Jump phenomena in the critical dynamic loading at a certain mass distribution are also assessed. Numerical results verified by a non-linear dynamic analysis using 2-DOF and 3-DOF models confirm the validity of the theoretical findings as well as the efficiency of the technique proposed herein.