As global issues such as climate change and overpopulation continue to grow, the role of the
engineer is forced to adapt. The general population now places an emphasis not only on the
performance of a mechanical system, but also the efficiency with which this can be achieved.
In pushing these structures to their maximum efficiency, a number of design and engineering
challenges can arise. In particular, the occurrence of geometric nonlinearities can lead to
failures in the linear modelling techniques that have traditionally been used.
The aim of this thesis is to increase the understanding of a number of widely-used, nonlinear
methods, so that they may eventually be used with the same ease and confidence as
traditional linear techniques.
A key theme throughout this work is the notion that nonlinear behaviour is typically
approximated in some way, rather than finding exact solutions. This is not to say that exact
solutions cannot be found, but rather that the process of doing so, or the solutions themselves,
can be prohibitively complicated. Across the techniques considered, there is a desire to
accurately predict the frequency-amplitude relationship, whether this be for the free or forced
response of the system.
Analytical techniques can be used to produce insight that may be inaccessible through
the use of numerical methods, though they require assumptions to be made about the structure.
In this thesis, a number of these methods are compared in terms of their accuracy and
their usability, so that the influence of the aforementioned assumptions can be understood.
Frequency tuning is then used to bring the solutions from three prominent methods in line
with one another.
The Galerkin method is used to project a continuous beam model into a discrete set
of modal equations, as is the traditional method for treating such a system. Motivated by
microscale beam structures, an updated approach for incorporating nonlinear boundary conditions
is developed. This methodology is then applied to two example structures to demonstrate
the importance of this procedure in developing accurate solutions.
The discussion is expanded to consider non-intrusive reduced-order modelling techniques,
which are typically applied to systems developed with commercial finite element software.
By instead applying these methods to an analytical nonlinear system, it is possible to compare
the approximated results with exact analytical solutions. This allows a number of observations
to be made regarding their application to real structures, noting a number of situations
in which the static cases applied or the software itself may influence the solution accuracy.
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