Free Vibration Analysis of Battened Beams

This paper presents an analytical solution for the free vibration analysis of simply supported battened beams/columns. The free vibration frequencies are derived using the classical Hamilton's principle. Unlike most of the existing studies on this topic, the present approach considers not only the transverse shear deformation effect but also the discrete effect of battens on the dynamic characteristics of the beams. The present analytical solution is validated using the data obtained from the finite element analysis. The results show that the shear and discrete effects of battens have significant influence on the frequencies of battened beams, particularly for the beams that are short and the vibration modes that are in high-order. It is also shown that the frequency decreases with the increase of the beam length. The decrease is rather rapid for beams that are shorter than 5 m.