Vibration and Buckling of Rotating, Pretwisted, Preconed Beams Including Coriolis Effects

Abstract

The effects of pretwist, precone, setting angle and Coriolis forces on the vibration and buckling behavior of rotating, torsionally rigid, cantilevered beams are studied in this investigation. The beam is considered to be clamped on the axis of rotation in one case, and off the axis of rotation in the other. Two methods are employed for the solution of the vibration problem: one based upon a finite-difference approach using second-order central differences for solution of the equations of motion, and the other based upon the minimum of the total potential energy functional with a Ritz type of solution procedure making use of complex forms of shape functions for the dependent variables. Numerical results obtained by using these methods are compared to those existing in the literature for specialized simple cases. Results indicating the individual and collective effects of pretwist, precone, setting angle, thickness ratio, and Coriolis forces on the natural frequencies and the buckling boundaries are presented and discussed. Furthermore, it is shown that the inclusion of Coriolis effects is necessary for blades of moderate-to-large thickness ratios while these effects are not so important for small thickness ratio blades. Finally, the results show the possibility of buckling due to centrifugal softening terms for large values of precone and rotation.