Stability of Shallow Arches Against Snap-Through Under Timewise Step Loads

Abstract

The dynamic stability of simply supported, shallow arches subjected to timewise step loads is studied in this paper. Presented is a general method which allows us to treat arches of arbitrary shape and load of arbitrary spatial distribution. Specific problems investigated are sinusoidal arches under sinusoidal loads, the effects of the second harmonics in the arch shape and in the load distribution, and sinusoidal arches subjected to uniform loads or concentrated and eccentric loads. The results are expressed in the form of sufficiency conditions for stability and sufficiency conditions for instability. The criteria given in this paper are reliable because the analysis does not involve truncating the solutions to a small number of modes.