1 

Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using

Continuous Galerkin-Petrov Time-Discretization Method

Abstract a,
M. Sabeel Khan *
In this paper, we present a new numerical method for nonlinear H. Kaneez a
vibrational analysis of Euler-Bernoulli beams. Our approach is
based on the continuous Galerkin-Petrov time discretization meth- a
Department of Applied Mathematics,
od. The Euler-Bernoulli beam equation which governs its vibrations Institute of Space Technology, 44000
is transformed into set of ordinary differential equations and the Islamabad, Pakistan
presented method is employed in order to investigate the vibration-
al response. A comparison is made between present method and *
[email protected]
different other methods available in literature. It is observed that
the obtained results are in strong agreement with other results in http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1679-78253327
literature. We conclude that the present method has a great poten-
tial to deal with nonlinear vibration analysis problems of beams Received 29.08.2016
and related structures like rods and shafts. In revised form 20.01.2017
Accepted 22.06.2017
Keywords Available online 10.07.2017
Nonlinear vibration; Euler-Bernoulli beams; Time discretization;
Numerical method

1 INTRODUCTION

In the design and fabrication of many engineering structures and machines, vibrational analysis and
dynamical response of structures like beams (or rods or shafts) are important factor to investigate in
order to increase the performance of these structures. For the analysis of complex engineering struc-
tures like bridges, tall buildings, vehicle guide-ways, huge cranes, turbines and compressor blades,
beams can be used as simple model. The dynamical response of beams is governed by linear as well
as nonlinear differential equations both in space and time. To study their behavior it is therefore
important to design methods for the numerical solutions of these partial differential equations. In
this respect, recently some approximate analytical techniques (see for instance, Barari et al., 2010;
Bayat et al., 2010; Baghari et al., 2014; Jafari et al., 2014; Bayat et al., 2011;, Ganji, 2012; He,
1999; He, 2006; Khan et al., 2012; Liu and Gurram, 2009; Mirgolbabaei et al., 2010; Sfahani et al.,
2011) as well as numerical methods by Lai et al. (2008) (see also, Boukhalfa et al., 2010; Da Silva
2 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov…

et al., 2009; Ganji et al., 2011) and references therein, have been proposed to investigate the nonlin-
ear vibrations of beams for designing and fabrication purpose.
The theory of Euler-Bernoulli beams which is based on the assumption that beam curvature is
related to its bending moment provides a good explanation of long isotropic bar’s bending behavior.
Several methods have been proposed for obtaining solution to the nonlinear equations of motions
governing the Euler-Bernoulli beam’s response. Nonlinear vibrations of the Euler-Bernoulli beam
has been investigated by Barari et al. (2011) using the Variational iteration and parameterized per-
turbation methods. Nikkar et al. (2014) studied the nonlinear vibration response of Euler-Bernoulli
beam by approximate analytical techniques where they utilized Variational He’s approach and La-
place iteration technique in order to solve the respective nonlinear governing equations. Pakar and
Bayat (2013) applied a max-min approach, also by He, to investigate the nonlinear vibrational re-
sponse of Euler-Bernoulli beams subjected to an axial load. Nonlinear behavior of Euler-Bernoulli
beam with different end conditions has also been studied by Rafieipour et al. (2014) using Laplace
iteration method. Lindstedt-Poincare techniques for non linear vibrational analysis have been em-
ployed to double-clamped and simply-supported beams subjected to an axial load by Ahmadian et
al. (2009). Javanmard et al. (2013) used He’s Energy method in order to get solution of nonlinear
vibration problem of Euler-Bernoulli beam subjected to axial loads. A similar study has been per-
formed earlier by Pirbodaghi et al. (2009) but with homotopy analysis method. The nonlinear equa-
tion of motion for large amplitude free vibrational analysis of Euler-Bernoulli beam resting on vari-
able elastic foundation was solved by Mirzabeigy and Madoliat (2016) with the application of sec-
ond order homotopy perturbation method. Moreover, the nonlinear vibrational response of Euler-
Bernoulli beams with geometric nonlinarity and subjected to axial loads was computed by Johnson
et al. S. (2014) where they used a differential transform and two auxiliary parameter based ho-
motopy analysis techniques.
Here, in this article, we present a new approach to solve equations of motions governing the dy-
namics of Euler-Bernoulli clamped-clamped-beam which is fixed from one end. This article is orga-
nized as follows. In Section II, a mathematical framework governing the nonlinear vibrations of Eu-
ler-Bernolulli beam is presented. In Section III, continuous Galerkin-Petrov time-discretization
method is developed. In Section IV, the developed method afterwards applied to the governing
equations of Euler-Bernoulli beam presented in Section II. In Section V, simulations data and nu-
merical results are discussed. In last Section, conclusions are drawn based on the obtained simula-
tion results in Section V.

2 MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION

Let us consider a straight beam composed of homogeneous material having length L, placed on an
elastic foundation with modulus of elasticity as E. The beam is experiencing an axial force F as
shown in Figure 1, below. Let ‘A’ be the cross-sectional area of beam which is assumed to be uni-
form throughout its length. Further, suppose that there is no in plane deformation i.e. the planes of
the cross section remains plane after deformation. Now by ignoring the transverse normal and shear
strains one can write the equation of motion of the Euler-Bernoulli beam including the mid-plane
stretching effect as follows

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 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov… 3

L 2
 4Y  2Y  2Y Y EA  2Y  Y 
2L x 2 0  x 
EI 4   2  F 2  d  KY    dx  q(x,t), (1)
x t x t

where, d is the coefficient of viscous damping, K is the stiffness of foundation and q(x,t) is the
transverse directional load. In the absence of non-conservative forces above equation (1) reduced to
L 2
 4Y  2Y  2Y EA  2Y  Y 
2 L x 2 0  x 
EI 4   2  F 2  KY    dx  0. (2)
x t x

In order to undimensionalize the above equation we choose the following variables

~ X ~ Y EI ~ FL2 ~ KL4
X  ,Y  , ~
t t , F  and K  , (3)
L rG L4 EI EI

where, rG is the gyration radius of the cross-section of the beam. Using equation (3) and omitting
the tilde sign from the variables equations (2) thus can be written as follows
1 2
 4Y  2Y  2Y 1  2Y  Y 
2 x 2 0  x 
  F 2  KY    dx  0. (4)
x 4 t 2 x

Figure 1: A schematic representation of an Euler-Bernoulli beam fixed at one end and subjected to axial load.

Now, by assuming a product solution Y ( x, t )   ( x) (t ), where  (x) is the beam’s eigen
mode, and by applying the Galerkin method, an equation governing the beam dynamics is obtained
as

d 2 (t )
2
  (t )   3 (t )  0 (5)
dt
Where  and  can be determined by the relations
1 1
 1 2  1

   dx    dx
       dx dx
( iv )

 K 0 1  F 01 , and   0  01  .
  dx   dx 2.  dx
2 2 2

0 0 0

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4 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov…

Moreover, in order to complete the above problem description, the beam is subjected to follow-
ing initial conditions

d
 (0)  A, (0)  0, (6)
dt
where A is the amplitude of oscillation. Equation (5) along with initial conditions in Equation (6)
governs the nonlinear vibrational response of Euler-Bernoulli beams.

3 DESCRIPTION OF CONTINOUS GALERKIN-PETROV TIME-DISCRETIZATION METHOD

In this section, we present a time discretization method to solve nonlinear equations governing the
dynamics of Euler-Bernoulli beams. It is easy to see that Equation (5) can be transformed into a
system of nonlinear differential equations of the following form

d
U (t )  f(t,U(t)). (7)
dt

Where, U (t )  (, )T and f denotes the vector of unknown-state variables and vector comprising
non-linear functions in both time and space, respectively. Here,  is the first order time derivative
of . In order to develop a numerical method to solve such dynamical systems, here, we use the
concept of a Galerkin-type formulation and time-discretization. Let S be a space of all possible solu-
tions to set of nonlinear differential equations in Equation (7). We search a vector of unknown
states U : [0,  ]  S such that

d
U (t )  f(t,U(t)), t  (0, ) , where
dt (8)
U (0)  U 0 .

By choosing  as a test space the problem in Equation (8) can be formulated as follows: Find
U  S such that
 
d
0 V (t ) dt U (t )dt  0 V t  f t,U t  dt,  V  . U (0)  U 0 ,
T T
With (9)

Equation (9) is the weak form of problem in Equation (8). Now, to solve it over the time inter-
val I  0,  let us discretized the interval I into further sub-intervals with each sub-interval
I n  t n-1 , t n  where n belongs to the set 1,..., N}. Now, each interval is having the following
property
N

 t
n1
t   0, .
n1, n

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 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov… 5

Moreover, it also satisfy

t n 1, t n   t m 1, t m   {0}, for all n  m n,m  1,..., N.

In order to compute the vector of state variables U (t ) at time interval I n , we choose

n , j t   Ρ k Ι n  as a set of basis functions. Here, Ρ k Ι n  represents the k-th degree polynomials
space defined on interval I n by

 k 
ΡΙ n , S H  : U t  : Ι n  S H ; U t    u j t j , for all t  Ι n , u j  S H . (10)
 j 0 
The vector of state variables U (t ) in Equation (5) is thus approximated by

k
U t   U  (t )   u nj  n,j t  , for all t  I n (11)
j 0

j
Where, u n are vector elements in Hilbert space S H . Global vector of state variables
U (t ) : Ι n  SH is in the discrete-solution space S  S where, k


Sk : U t   C Ι n , S H  : U t  |Ι n  Ρ k Ι n , S H  ; for all n  1,..., N , 
with Ι n  Ι n  t n 1, t n . The symbol  above represents a discretization parameter. The test
function V t  is taken from discrete test space  where,
k


k : V t   L2 Ι n , S H  : V t  | Ι n  Ρ k -1 Ι n , S H  ;  n  1,..., N . 
By denoting V t  as a discrete approximation of the test function V t , then the weak prob-
lem in Equation (9) takes the following Variational form which states:
Find U  t   U o  Sk ,0 such that

 
d
0 V t  dt U t  dt  0 V t  f t,U t  dt ; V  .
T T k
(12)

Above sk , 0 : Sk  S denotes the subspace of Sk with zero as initial condition. Define a pol-
o

ynomial   Ρ Ι  on the time interval I , zero everywhere in the set I , except at the time
n ,i k -1 n

interval Ι n  t n 1 , t n  , and v  S H as an arbitrary scalar function then the variational problem on

time interval I n in Equation (12) reads


 T d 
 
 v t  U  t   n,i t  dt  Ι v t  f t ,U  t   n.i t  dt ; v  S H .
dt
T
(13)
Ιn
  n

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6 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov…

Or, equivalently, we can write by using Equation (11)

 T k j d   k  
I  v t 
j 0
u n  n,j t   n,i t  dt    v T t 
dt 
f  t ,  u nj  n,j t    n.i t  dt ; v  S H .
 j 0

In  
 (14)
n


To define Basis functions in Equation (14), a mapping M n : I  Ι n is used which maps the
 
time interval I  [1,1] from natural time interval I to physical time interval Ι n . Now, for every
 
t  I there exists t  Ι n such that

tn -1  tn  n ˆ
t  M n tˆ  :  t  Ιn ; n 1,..., N .
2 2
The basis functions defined on physical time interval Ι n can now be calculated in natural time
interval as

 n , j t  :  j M n1 t  ; j  0,..., k ,


 n.i t  : ˆi M n1 t  ; i  0,...k - 1.

Where,

 
 j  Ρ k Ιˆ , and ˆi  Ρ k -1 Ιˆ are satisfying the property

 j  1   0, j , ˆ j 1   k,j , (15)

 k,j Denote the Kronecker’s delta. To get a second-order approximation of discrete vector of state
variables U (t ) we require to find the coefficients u nj ; j  0,1,2. By using property of basis func-
0
tion from Equation (15) and with the application of initial condition the coefficients u n can be
determined from the following

 U0, n 1
u 0n   k (16)
u n-1 , n  1.

Since, it is easy to deal with natural-time interval Iˆ, thus Equation (14) is reconstructed into

n  
 v u    ˆ  ˆi tˆ  dtˆ ; v  S H
k k

i, j
T j
n 
2 ˆ
v f 

T
M n
ˆ
t ,  u j ˆ
n  j t  (17)
j 0  j 0 
where, i  0,..., k - 1 and

ˆ j tˆ  ˆi tˆ  dtˆ.

d
 i , j :  (18)
ˆ
dtˆ

Now, with the application of k  1 -point Gauss-Lobatto formula in Equation (18) we write

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 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov… 7

 T  
 v u    ŵ 
k k k

i, j
T j
n l v f  M n t̂ l ,  u nj ˆ j tˆl  ˆi tˆl  ; v  S H (19)
j 0 l 0   j 0 

Where, ŵl represents the weights tˆ0  - 1 , tˆk  1 , and tˆl  Ιˆ; l  1,..., k  1 are roots of the Le-
gendre polynomial Ρ k -1 t  . Using the abbreviation

t n ,l : g n tˆl  ,  i,l : ŵ l ˆ tˆl  and  j.l : ˆ j tˆl . (20)

Hence, we finally arrived at the following system of coupled equations

æ æ ö
k sn k
ç T ç
k
÷ö÷
å ai , j (v T u nj ) =
2
å bi,l çççv f
çè
ççt n,l ,
çè
å unj h j,i ÷÷÷÷÷÷ ; v Î S H , i = 0,...,k -1 and j = 0,..., k ,
÷ø÷ø
(21)
j =0 l =0 j =0

with initial conditions as described in Equation (16).

3.1 Computation of Parameters  i, j ,  i, j and  j,l

To compute unknown parameters in Equation (21) let us select the following set of test functions

ˆ i tˆj    i,j , ˆ 0 tˆj    tˆj , 1 tˆ j   1 for all i, j  0,1,2,

3
4

   
Where, each ˆ j tˆ  Ρ k Ιˆ , ˆ i tˆ  Ρ k -1 Ιˆ , and tˆ0  - 1 , tˆ1  0 , and tˆ2  1 . By this choice of
test functions  i, j ,  i, j and  j,l are calculated and are given as under

 1
 0,0   2 , 0,1  1  1, 2 , 0, 2   0,0 ,1, 0   0,1 ,1,1  0,

 1 1
 0,0  ,  0,1  0,  0, 2    0,0 , 1,1  3 0,0 , 1,0  1, 2   ,
 4 4 1,1
   , for all i, j  0,1,2}.
 i, j i,j


4 APPLICATION TO GOVERNING EQUATIONS OF EULER-BERNOULLI BEAMS

The method presented in Section 3 is applied to motion equation in Equation (5) and the obtained
discrete set of equations are solved using numerical algorithm outlined as under
Numerical Algorithm:
Step 1: Initialize the known parameters  and 
Step 2: Choose a time step size n
Step 3: Set the initial conditions at time tn as

nm 1  A,  nm 1  0

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Step 4: First solve the following equations for unknowns nm ,  nm

 n m 1 m 1
1 1
 nm   nm 1   nm 1 
2 2 8
n  n  
1 1 
  3
 nm   nm 1   nm 1  n    nm 1  nm 1    nm 1  nm 1
2 2 8
     
3

Step 5: Using the computed values for  nm and  nm from Step 4, Solve the following nonlinear
equations for nm 1 and  nm 1.

n
 nm 1   nm 1 
6
 m 1
n  4 nm   nm 1 
 nm 1   nm 1 
n
6
  m 1
n   
3
 4 nm   nm 1    nm 1  4  nm   nm 1  
3
 
3

Step 6: Use the computed values of  nm1 and  nm 1 from Step 5 to get the numerical values of  nm
and  nm from Step 4 by back substitution.
Step 7: Compute the solution at time step tn by equation (11)
Step 8: Update the solution for the next time iteration by

nm11  nm 1 ,  nm11   nm 1.

Step 9: Update the time step tn  tn   n

Step 10: Go to Step 4.

5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this Section, nonlinear vibrational response of a clamped-clamped Euler-Bernoulli beam fixed at

one end is presented by a new numerical method. The results computed by the presented method
are compared with the other existing methods in literature (for instance, with the results of Barai et
al. 2011, Nikkar et al. 2014 and Johnson et al. 2014). For the numerical computations a time step
size of 0.05 is chosen for the discretization of time domain by the present method. The non-
dimensional deflection  (t ) is calculated by the presented method at the center of the beam and is
shown in Figure 2, with the variation of non-dimensional maximum amplitude of oscillation over a
wide range of time.

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Figure 2: Non-dimensional deflection with varying values of amplitude

A and with parametric values     1.0.

In Table 1 and Table 2, a comparison is made between the presented method and four different
methods, with semi-analytical approach by Barari et al. (2011), with a semi-analytical method by
Nikkar et al. (2014), with semi-analytical approach by Johnson et al. (2014) and with numerical
method RK-4. It is seen that the computed values of deflection at the center of the beam for differ-
ent values of maximum amplitude of oscillation are in strong agreement with the results by these
methods. In Table 3, relative errors are provided which are computed by the formula

(Solution by Present Method - Solution by Existing Method )

 100 %,
Solution by Existing Method

Wherein, Error-1 is calculated by taking RK-4 solution as an existing solution. In Error-II the
existing solution is taken from the semi-analytical approach by Barari et al. (2011). Error-III is ob-
tained by taking the existing solution form the method by Nikkar et al. (2014). In all of these calcu-
lations the errors are shown for three different amplitude of oscillation of beam over a wide range of
time. From Table 3, it can be clearly seen that the results by present method converges closely to
other results in literature and are in strong agreement.

A RK-4 Barari et al. (2011) Nikkar et al. (2014) Present

0.01 0.008775827082332 0.008775710513259 0.008775710509477 0.008653113482869
0.1 0.087759719142174 0.087643206097855 0.087642827100616 0.086406655501930
0.2 0.175528204796203 0.174597455961528 0.174585253116176 0.172060842262657
0.3 0.263314167649526 0.260180487515907 0.260086892907199 0.263974531478741
0.4 0.351126207698248 0.343723299721559 0.343323578255470 0.349072483074928
0.5 0.438972761263577 0.424576467617775 0.423336627126820 0.417180214867134
0.6 0.526862050755839 0.502116086386647 0.498973411668122 0.492625565690737
0.7 0.614802037962082 0.575749233260282 0.568819355464365 0.563875657455006
0.8 0.702800381522887 0.644918846456226 0.631123805468134 0.630358772839251
0.9 0.790864399137227 0.709107932868351 0.683724780583061 0.691556439573670
1.0 0.879001034896931 0.767843030699686 0.723980197798699 0.766656852847480

Table 1: Comparison of time marching solution of equation (5) with parametric values     1.0.

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10 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov…

A  RK 4   present  Barari et al. (2011)   present  Nikkar et al.(2014)   present  Johnson et al. (2014)   present
0.01 0.000122713599463 0.0001225970303900 0.00012259702660799 0.0003821333327880
0.1 0.001353063640244 0.0012365505959250 0.00123617159868600 0.0019824623866750
0.2 0.003467362533546 0.0025366136988710 0.00252441085351901 0.0008865790820170
0.3 0.000660363829215 0.0037940439628340 0.00388763857154201 0.0052723348189849
0.4 0.002053724623320 0.0053491833533690 0.00574890481945800 0.0086853097383650
0.5 0.021792546396443 0.0073962527506410 0.00615641225968599 0.0087110167343409
0.6 0.034236485065102 0.0094905206959099 0.00634784597738497 0.0002395324508129
0.7 0.050926380507076 0.0118735758052760 0.00494369800935901 0.0063966672702809
0.8 0.072441608683636 0.0145600736169750 0.00076503262888294 0.0161331435918892
0.9 0.099307959563557 0.0175514932946811 0.00783165899060900 0.0078649950295989
1.0 0.112344182049451 0.0011861778522060 0.04267665504878090 0.0153845773856570

Table 2: Differences between the time marching solution of equation (5) by presented method and
different other schemes in literature. The parameters are chosen to be     1.0.

A time Error-I Error-II Error-III

5 8.39406344436937 1.43006947021705 1.43006930029566
10 1.64295821637604 1.65335398475738 0.46126609193088
0.01 25 -0.40714155296337 -0.30013048066676 -0.30013048391456
50 0.34564381067195 0.70609180050204 0.70609178786218
100 0.89942811653737 1.32438720734438 1.32438716831965
5 -0.01611628030638 -2.71860640853757 -3.34003971902284
10 -2.19636228576523 0.94834463220716 -0.15087284130191
0.50 25 1.33999271743426 0.18473004818300 -0.63051410694749
50 4.46407178480245 -0.21897390156171 -1.08460097418586
100 -5.91449682727209 -0.55016306148146 -0.57899624097327
5 -5.825758083900410 0.33425814206559 -1.25501908713661
10 -0.411754581578781 -1.42949464499397 -0.67810815791013
1.00 25 -0.614810964667922 3.07084443826624 0.52366254911929
50 0.200159632081500 -0.86954946868848 0.65475889510081
100 1.993160046364360 -0.27554338389560 0.96750105622486

Table 3: Relative errors between the time marching solution of equation (5) by presented method
with different other schemes in literature. The parameters are chosen to be     1.0.

In Figure 3, time marching deflection response over a wide range of time is shown where the result
obtained from present method is graphically compared with the result computed from semi-analytical
approach by Nikkar et al. (2014). In Figure 4, the time marching response of deflection by present
method is compared with the solution of deflection response of center of the beam by Barari et al.
(2011). It can be observed from these two Figures that the center of the beam shows same deflection
behavior for a large time period as depicted by the semi-analytical approaches in literature. A para-
metric study is carried out to observe time marching response of the central deflection of beam. In
Figure 5 and Figure 6, the central deflection of beam is observed with varying the parameters  and
 . The initial maximum amplitude of vibration was chosen to be 1.0 and a time step size of 0.005 for
the calculation by the presented method. By varying the parameters  and  , an increase in the
maximum amplitude of vibration is seen as the time marches. In Table 4, a comparison is made be-

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 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov… 11

tween the accumulated errors by classical numerical scheme RK-4 and present method. Also the accu-
racy of solution by both of the numerical methods is shown for two different time step sizes. In all the
computations of accumulated errors in Table 4 the reference solution by Johnson et al. (2014) is taken
into consideration. It is observed that our present numerical method is more accurate in predicting the
solution over the classical RK-4 method. This is highly due to the fact that present method does not
involve iterative time integration and therefore have less accumulated errors as shown in Table 4.
Moreover, it is observed that that the accumulated error decreases with an increase in the time step
size for both the classical RK-4 and present method.

1
Present
0.8
Nikkar et al. (2014)
0.6

0.4

0.2
η(t)

−0.2

−0.4

−0.6

−0.8

−1
0 5 10 15 20 25
t

Figure 3: A comparison of time history of central deflection curve of beam. The time
step used for this simulation is 0.05 and the parameters     A  1.0.

1
Present
0.8 Barari et al. (2011)

0.6

0.4

0.2
η(t)

−0.2

−0.4

−0.6

−0.8

−1
0 5 10 15 20 25
t

Figure 4: A comparison of time history of central deflection curve of beam. The time
step used for this simulation is 0.05 and the parameters     A  1.0.

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12 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov…

1.5

ε = 0.15
1
ε = 0.25
ε = 0.50
0.5
ε = 1.00
η(t)

−0.5

−1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
t

Figure 5: Time-history of central-deflection of beam with varying  . The parametric value of  is chosen to be 1.0.

Time- Number Accumulated

Accuracy (in percent) Accumulated error Accuracy (in percent)
step of time error
by RK-4 by present method by present method
size steps by RK-4
5 7.1629284856E-04 7.838643342877E+01 4.7825078312E-04 8.556916328361E+01
10 4.1601192713E-04 9.991054140377E+01 2.8166615852E-04 9.996668334601E+01
25 8.9254489341E-05 9.910446043034E+01 6.3862965951E-05 9.935922760337E+01
0.05 50 1.8633928689E-04 9.809327174198E+01 1.4120960638E-04 9.855506398418E+01
100 3.6919714161E-04 9.584366665341E+01 2.9192878467E-04 9.671353538314E+01
250 7.2383261971E-04 7.572278868091E+01 5.9430126403E-04 8.006724623713E+01
500 3.7148542418E-04 9.975956260686E+01 1.8132325720E-04 1.000734824724E+02
5 5.04555298800E-05 9.82223873076E+01 2.39457037950E-05 9.91563623037E+01
10 2.64336613610E-05 1.00163169326E+02 1.36876932130E-05 1.00315112462E+02
25 4.97951263280E-05 1.00561378909E+02 2.28701839830E-05 1.01222287224E+02
0.005 50 1.70105932140E-05 9.98284057000E+01 3.19282474000E-06 9.99677923915E+01
100 3.59407763030E-05 9.96277324234E+01 6.42406862100E-06 9.99334607456E+01
250 1.61756733776E-04 9.35316240962E+01 2.41848699480E-05 9.90328882986E+01
500 4.74408476010E-05 9.94577701222E+01 1.21912724690E-05 1.00139341359E+02

Table 4: A comparison of accumulated errors and accuracy for RK-4 and present method.

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 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov… 13

1.5

λ = 0.15
1
λ = 0.25

λ = 0.50
0.5
λ = 1.00
η(t)

−0.5

−1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
t

Figure 6: Time-history of central-deflection of beam with varying  . The parametric value of  is chosen to be 1.0.

6 CONCLUSIONS

A new numerical method is presented for nonlinear vibrational analysis of Euler-Bernoulli beams.
The non-dimensional central deflection response of a clamped-clamped-Euler-Bernoulli beam (fixed
from one end side) is investigated under different initial vibration amplitudes using this numerical
technique. A comparison of computed results by present method is made with the results by other
semi-analytical schemes in literature and the numerical values of central deflection of beam are tab-
ulated. Relative errors between the present method and other semi-analytical approaches in litera-
ture have been shown to observe the convergence of solution obtained by present method. Moreo-
ver, a parametric study is carried out to investigate effect of different parameters on beam’s central
deflection. It is worth mentioning that the obtained results by presented method are in strong
agreement with results by semi-analytical approaches (for instance, Barari et al. 2011, Nikkar et al.
2014 and Johnson et al. 2014) in literature and also with classical numerical scheme RK-4. It is
worthy of noting that the present scheme does not involve iterative time integration like other
methods in literature and thus no associated accumulative errors. Therefore, it is capable to provide
accurate results with high accuracy and convergence characteristics as can be seen by the presented
results and thus can be utilized to compute dynamical response of structures like rods and shafts.
We conclude that the present method has great potential in dealing with nonlinear vibrational re-
sponse of beams and similar structures like rods and shafts.

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and constructive sug-
gestions in order to improve the quality of this research article.

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14 M.S. Khan and H. Kaneez / Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of Euler-Bernoulli Beams by using Continuous Galerkin-Petrov…

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