Dynamic Stability Analysis of a Beam Excited by a Sequence of Moving Mass Particles

In this paper, the dynamic stability analysis of a simply supported beam carrying a sequence of moving masses is investigated. Many applications such as motion of vehicles or trains on bridges, cranes transporting loads along their span, fluid transfer pipe systems and the barrel of different weapons can be represented as a flexible beam carrying moving masses. The periodical traverse of masses over the beam results a linear time periodic problem. Floquet theory and Incremental Harmonic Balance (IHB) method are used to obtain the boundary of stable and unstable regions in the plane of moving mass parameters. Results of IHB method do verify the boundary curve separating the stable and unstable regions generated by Floquet theory. Also the result of numerical simulations confirms the result of the applied semi-analytical methods.