Nonlinear Flexural Vibrations of Unshearable Elastic Rings
Refined theories are employed to study nonlinear vibrations of elastic rings in the mth flexural mode away from autoparametric resonances involving other flexural modes. A top-down modeling approach is followed to describe the rings undergoing all deformation modes in space by the Special Cosserat theory of curved rods. The specialization to extensional-flexural-shearing, then to extensional-flexural, and finally to purely flexural planar motions is illustrated. Free undamped extensional-flexural nonlinear motions involving the mth mode and its companion mode are investigated via a direct asymptotic approach based on the method of multiple scales applied to the geometrically exact equations of motion and it is shown that these motions are softening for linearly elastic rings while there are thresholds in the constitutive laws separating softening from hardening behaviors.