Minimum-weight design of flexible arms for specified fundamental frequency

The problem of designing a minimum-weight one-link flexible arm for a specified fundamental frequency of vibration has been investigated. The optimum design problem is formulated as a nonlinear eigenvalue problem using the variational method. Two iteration schemes are developed to find the optimum solution in the normal and degenerated cases. Numerical results have indicated that a significant reduction in link weight can be achieved by the proposed method. For example, for a geometrically similar cross section and a specified fundamental frequency ranging from 1 Hz to 10 Hz, the weight of an optimum link is 400% to 600% lighter than that of an uniform link.  1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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