Investigation of the behavior of continuous beams under steady state forced vibration

C.T.G. Looney proposed a method of solving the problem of steady-state forced vibration of continuous frames. Starting with the analysis of a single span, simply supported beam, the method was extended to continuous beams and frames. An investigation of his method was undertaken comparing experimental deflection with those predicted by Looney’s method. A single span beam and a two span continuous beam was used in the experiment. A mechanical shaker was used to vibrate the beam. The experimental and nautical curves showed good agreement with the experimental values being consistently higher. Although the weight of the shaker's moving parts was less than one-tenth the weight of the beam it had considerable effect in lowing the resonant frequency and increasing amplitudes.