The Vibrations Of A Beam With A Local Unilateral Elastic Contact

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nonlinear vibrations of a beam with a unilateral elastic contact, modeling satellite solar array panels with rubber snubbers, using numerical simulations and experimental validation to understand their dynamic behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a combined numerical and experimental approach to analyze the nonlinear vibrations of a beam with a unilateral spring, relevant for satellite solar array design.

Findings

Finite element model accurately predicts beam dynamics.

Experimental results validate the numerical simulations.

Nonlinear effects are significant in the system's response.

Abstract

The mass reduction of satellite solar arrays results in significant panel flexibility. When such structures are launched there is a possible striking at one with another dynamically, leading ultimately to structural damage during the launch stage. To prevent this, rubber snubbers are mounted at well chosen points of the structure and they act as one sided linear spring; as a negative consequence, the dynamic of these panels becomes nonlinear. In this paper a solar array and a snubber are simply modeled as a linear Euler-Bernoulli beam with a one sided linear spring respectively. In this investigation, a numerical and an experimental study of a beam striking a one-sided spring under harmonic excitation is presented. The finite element approximation is used to solve the partial differential equations governing the structural dynamics. The models are subsequently validated and updated with experiments.