Free longitudinal vibrations of bimodular beams: a comparative study

In this paper, we consider the problem of the free longitudinal vibrations of a beam made of a bimodular material, i.e. an elastic material whose in-tension Young's modulus is a fraction of that under compression. After recalling the exact solutions for an infinite beam and for a beam with fixed ends calculated via the characteristics method, we apply high-resolution methods based on the finite-element approach to solve the nonlinear equation of the motion. In particular, we compare the exact solutions with the numerical solutions calculated using the collocation and least-squares method developed in the present study, the space-time element method, as well as total variation diminishing (TVD) and Newmark methods.