Abstract This paper presents effects of shear deformation on flutter instability of cantilever beam subject to a concentrated follower force. The discrete form of equation of motion is formulated based on the Lagrange. In the presented formulation, the beam is modeled using Timoshenko beam theory, and constant shear distribution through the thickness of the beam is considered. Consistent interpolation scheme is adopted to avoid the shear locking for thin beams. Consequently, convergence of the finite element simulation is enhanced. The effect of rotary inertial term is considered in the flutter study, which has significant influence on the beam behavior as the beam thickness increases. The axial degrees of freedom are taken into account in energy expressions, to improve the accuracy of the results. Results presented for different beam geometries. The numerical results show high efficiency and good convergence characteristic. The effect of concentrated mass on the flutter instability of beam is considered and results are presented for various locations and values of concentrated masses. Furthermore, the shear effects are highlighted in this study by comparing the results obtained from the Euler-Bernoulli with those obtained from the Timoshenko beam model.

Abstract Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of Tension Leg Platform (TLP) is very crucial for preventing catastrophic and sudden collapse of the structures. One of the methods of monitoring these structures is implementing SHM sensors. Supplying energy for these sensors for a long period is a challenging problem. So, one of the new methods of supplying energy for SHM, is usage of mechanical energy. In this method, the piezoelectric material is employed to convert the mechanical energy which is resulted from vibration of structure, to electrical energy. The advantage of this method is based on not implementing the battery charging system. Therefore, in this paper, after modeling TLP structure, energy supplying of these sensors with piezoelectric converters is studied. Furthermore, fault diagnosis of these structures in the presence of different uncertainties is proposed by the features of voltage signal, produced from piezoelectric patches and fuzzy classification method. Results show that this method can diagnose faults of the structure with an acceptable success rate.