Bending, buckling, and free vibration analysis of multi-span beams

Abstract

In this paper, the modified segmented rod method (MSRM) will be used for bending, buckling, and free vibration analysis of multi-span beams. Since there is MSRM for a one-span beam in literature, slight corrections will enable the application of this method to the case of multi-span beams. The motivation for this research lies in the fact that there are engineering objects that must be modeled as multi-span beams, such as bridges. The proposed MSRM uses the absolute coordinates of the rigid segments, so the introduction of different boundary conditions as well as the loads can be done easily. The effectiveness of the MSRM was tested through numerical examples where the comparison with current results from the available literature was done.