Divergence and flutter of nonconservative systems with intermediate support (Q1820625)

Exact solutions are reported for the instability of uniform columns of length L resting on intermediate support at location q. Two cases of boundary conditions are considered at the left end of the column: simply supported or clamped. In both cases the transition phenomenon is reported: for small q/L the column becomes unstable by flutter, and for large q/L, it loses stability by divergence. In contrast to the two-term Galerkin approximation, reported before, no jump phenomenon is found.