Effect of Coulomb Damping on Buckling of a Simply Supported Beam
Abstract The present work describes a significant influence of a slight Coulomb damping on buckling of the simply supported beam subjected to an axial compressive force. Coulomb damping in the supporting points produces equilibrium regions around the well-known stable and unstable steady states under the pitchfork bifurcation which are analytically obtained in no consideration of the effect of Coulomb damping. After the transient response, the beam can stop any states in the equilibrium region, which becomes wider in the vicinity of the bifurcation point, depending on the initial condition. Also, the imperfection due to gravity is considered and it is theoretically shown that the equilibrium region is connected in the case when the imperfection due to gravity is relatively small comparing with the effect of the Coulomb damping, while the steady states under the pitchfork bifurcation in no consideration of the effect of Coulomb damping are necessarily disconnected by imperfection. Experimental results confirm the theoretically predicted effect of Coulomb damping in the supporting point on the buckling behavior of the beam.