• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.453-475
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• 2009

The literature regarding the free vibration analysis of Bernoulli-Euler and Timoshenko beams on elastic soil is plenty, but the free vibration analysis of Reddy-Bickford beams on elastic soil with/without axial force effect using the Differential Transform Method (DTM) has not been investigated by any of the studies in open literature so far. In this study, the free vibration analysis of axially loaded Reddy-Bickford beam on elastic soil is carried out by using DTM. The model has six degrees of freedom at the two ends, one transverse displacement and two rotations, and the end forces are a shear force and two end moments in this study. The governing differential equations of motion of the rectangular beam in free vibration are derived using Hamilton's principle and considering rotatory inertia. Parameters for the relative stiffness, stiffness ratio and nondimensionalized multiplication factor for the axial compressive force are incorporated into the equations of motion in order to investigate their effects on the natural frequencies. At first, the terms are found directly from the analytical solutions of the differential equations that describe the deformations of the cross-section according to the high-order theory. After the analytical solution, an efficient and easy mathematical technique called DTM is used to solve the governing differential equations of the motion. The calculated natural frequencies of one end fixed and the other end simply supported Reddy-Bickford beam on elastic soil using DTM are tabulated in several tables and figures and are compared with the results of the analytical solution where a very good agreement is observed and the mode shapes are presented in graphs.