Effect of boundary conditions and constitutive relations on the free vibration of nonlocal beams

The free vibrations of nonlocal Euler and Timoshenko beams have been studied extensively, but there still remain some problems concerning boundary conditions and constitutive relations. For cantilever beams, a counterintuitive stiffening phenomenon is widely observed. And to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no work concerning about the Timoshenko beam with nonlocal shear force and local bending moment. This work reconsiders and explains these problems based on nonlocal differential theory. After obtaining the governing equation for nonlocal Euler beam, it is observed that the governing equation has the same form as that for the vibration of local beam with axial compressive force. Thus by comparing the nonlocal effects to the effects of end axial force, the stiffening phenomenon of cantilever beams is found to be caused by a meaningless term in boundary bending moment. This explanation is also suitable for nonlocal Timoshenko cantilever beams. Besides, for Timoshenko beams, the nonlocal effects on tensile and shear stress constitutive relations are considered separately. Three kinds of nonlocal Timoshenko beam models are solved. Numerical comparison shows that the effects of nonlocal tensile are bigger than that of nonlocal shear stress. Especially, for Timoshenko beams with nonlocal shear force only, the nonlocal effects lower the natural frequency for all boundary conditions. This finding can verify our explanation for the stiffening phenomenon of cantilever beams. In addition, it is also observed that, for both nonlocal beam theories, if all nonlocal internal forces are included in the governing equations, the eigenvalue equations and natural frequencies corresponding to local and nonlocal boundary conditions are the same.