Buckling of an elastic beam with added high-frequency excitation

A non-linear buckling analysis of an elastic beam subjected to an axial sta tic force and high-frequency axial excitation is performed. A Galerkin beam discretization is applied and the method of direct partition of motion is used to obtain a set of autonomous model equations governing the slow avera ged behavior. Adding high-frequency excitation increases the buckling load, but stable buckled equilibria may co-exist with the stabilized straight po sition. The influence of an imperfection in the system is discussed and so is the effect of modal truncation in the discretization. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.