Dynamic Stability of a Spinning Timoshenko Beam Subjected to a Moving Mass-Spring-Damper Unit

This paper investigates the dynamic stability of a finite Timoshenko beam spinning along its longitudinal axis and subjected to a moving mass-spring-damper (MSD) unit traveling in the axial direction. The mass of the moving MSD unit makes contact with the beam all the time during traveling. Due to the moving MSD unit, the beam is acted upon by a periodic, parametric excitation. In this work, the equations of motion of the beam are first discretized by the Galerkin method. The discretized equations of motion are then partially uncoupled by the modal analysis procedure suitable for gyroscopic systems. Finally the method of multiple scales is used to obtain the stability boundaries of the beam. Numerical results show that if the displacement of the MSD unit is equal to only one of the two transverse displacements of the beam, very large unstable regions may appear at main resonances.