Investigation of the effects of geometry and

boundary conditions on the natural frequencies of

beams
Susmith C, Gopi Krishna N, Sudheesh Kumar C P
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Government College of Engineering Kannur
Kannur-670563,India
susmithc93@gmail.com, gopus.n@gmail.com, sudheeshkumar3@gmail.com,
Abstract-The effect of geometry on free vibration response of
beams under various boundary conditions are investigated in
this paper. Modal analysis using ANSYS is performed to
determine the natural frequencies of both uniform and nonuniform beams. All beams used in the analysis are of the same
mass, length and width. Various boundary conditions (such as
simply supported, fixed-fixed, and fixed-pinned) and different
geometries (linearly varying height from ends to mid-span) are
used in the numerical analysis. Among the given geometries
and constraints the one that gives the highest natural frequency
which in turn will give minimum free vibration response is
identified.

beam can be suppressed by changing its geometry.Taha and

Samir [4]developed a mathematical model for vibration of
non-uniform flexural beams. Pu and Liu [5]formulated a
numerical calculation for multi-span non-uniform beam
subjected to moving mass. Seon et.al [6]developed four
models for vibrations of uniform beams by using four
different theories.
Numerical analysis of beams (both uniform and nonuniform) with various boundary conditions is carried out in
this paper. Though similar studies have been reported in
literature, no attempt has been made in any paper to
determine the effect of geometry and boundary conditions
on the natural frequencies of beams, especially for the first
few modes. Beams with different geometries are modeled by
keeping their length, width and mass as constants. Modal
analysis of each beam is done to get the best geometry
which leads to the highest natural frequency for each
boundary condition.

I.
INTRODUCTION
The vibration analysis of beam is important in all
engineering fields. The knowledge about natural frequencies
helps the designer to avoid resonance conditions. Also, the
natural frequency of a beam depends on its geometry owing
to the fact that it is a function of the section modulus.
There were few studies on free vibration analysis of
beams. Shreya et.al [1]conducted a study to determine the
effect of geometry on the natural frequencies of simply
supported beams. This paper mainly deals with the effect of
geometry on the fundamental natural frequency of beams.
Numerical and experimental analyses were conducted to
find out the best geometry of beams (for a given length,
width, mass and material properties) with linearly varying
height which minimizes the free vibration response. Daniel
Cantero et.al[2]conducted an experiment on railway bridges
and performed time and frequency analyses of forced
vibration. This analysis provides a better resolution of
energy distribution map in time frequency domain. By this
study, they showed that effect of several governing factors
involved in dynamic response can be distinguished.
A study on the vibration of non-prismatic simply
supported beams under moving

loads was conducted by

MATERIAL
(kg/m3)
Sudheeshet. al [3]. Both free and
Structural Steel
7850
forced vibration responses are
studied and compared with those of a uniform beam. The
paper concludes that the resonance of a simply supported

II.

FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF BEAMS

A. Uniform Beam
In this section, a uniform beam with various support
conditions such as simply supported (SS), fixed-fixed (F-F)
and fixed-pinned (F-P) as shown in Fig. 1 are analyzed
using ANSYS to estimate the error, particularly in the higher
modes, in comparison with the values obtained from the
closed-form expressions. The meshing geometry and
element size is taken default by the software, only relevance
center is changed from coarse to fine. The default geometry
is usually quadrilateral or cubical in shape. The
specifications of the beams used in the analysis are given in
Table I.
E
( N/m2)

L (m)

B
(m)

hu
(m)

2x1011

0.64

0.032

0.024

TABLE I.
SPECIFICATIONS OF BEAM

hu
(a)

hu
(b)

hu

Fig .2. SS uniform beam showing the 1st mode (ANSYS)

2)
(C)

Fig. 1. Uniform beam with various boundary conditions (a) SS, (b) F-F,
(c) F-P

Fixed-Fixed (F-F)

The same uniform beam as mentioned in section II (A) 1

(but with fixed-fixed boundary condition as shown in Fig. 1
(b) is analyzed here to compare the results with those
obtained from the numerical expressions (Eq. (2)) given by

A n2
n =
(2)
EI
4

1)

Simply Supported (SS)

The uniform beam with simply supported boundary

conditions shown in Fig.1(a) and specified by the geometry
as given in Table I is analyzed using ANYS to compare the
result with the value obtained from the analytical expression
given by Eq. (1).

n=

n2 2
L2

EI
(1)
A

Where n is the mode number, L is the length of the beam,

E the Youngs modulus, is the density and A is the crosssectional area of the beam. Only the natural frequencies for
the first three modes (n=1, 2 and 3) are determined because
in general the influence of higher modes are negligible.
The first, second and third natural frequencies obtained
for n=1, 2 and 3 are 134.04 Hz, 536.16 Hz and 1206.37 Hz
respectively. The corresponding values obtained from
ANSYS are 133.28 Hz (see Fig. 2), 522.48 Hz, and 1112.6
Hz. This exercise is done just to get an idea about the
amount of error in the estimation of higher frequencies
obtained from ANYS when compared with the analytical
results.

Where, n l=C . Here, C= 4.723, 7.85 and 10.995

corresponding to the first, second and third mode
respectively.
The first, second and third frequencies obtained for n=1,
2 and 3 are 304.16 Hz, 837.76 Hz, and 1643.51 Hz
respectively. The corresponding values obtained from
ANSYS are 302.68 Hz, 824.31 Hz and 1590.8 Hz.
3)

Fixed-Pinned (F-P)

Here also, the same uniform used in section II A 1 and

section II A 2 is considered. The only difference is that the
boundary conditions are of fixed-pinned type. Similar to the
case of F-F beams, the results are compared with the
numerically obtained values using Eq. (2) in which C=
3.92 , 7.068 ,
10.2 respectively. The first,
second and third frequencies obtained for n=1, 2 and 3 are
208.90 Hz, 679.16 Hz and 1417.21 Hz respectively. The
corresponding values obtained from ANSYS are 208.83 Hz,
669.96 Hz and 1377.7 Hz.
The error in the natural frequencies for the first three
modes obtained from ANSYS is estimated and shown in
TABLE II.
TABLE II.
ERROR IN THE FIRST THREE
NATURAL FREQUENCIES
Error (%)
Mode (n)

1
2

SS

F-F

F-P

0.566

0.486

0.033

2.550

1.605

1.354

7.770

3.207

2.787

In the case of SS beam, it is found that the error increases

with the increase in the order of frequencies. This value
varies from 0.566% to 7.77%. In the case of beam with F-F
and F-P boundary conditions also, the error increases as in
the case of SS. In F-F condition the errors is seen to vary
from 0.486% to 3.207%.In F-P condition the error increases
from 0.033% to 2.787%, this is comparatively low. When it
comes to the case of fundamental frequency the error is
observed to be minimum for F-P condition and maximum in
the case of SS beam.

decreases. The peak value is obtained at =1.333 and its

value is 144.56 Hz. This result has already been obtained
experimentally and analytically by Shreya et.al.[1].
However, they have not investigated the behavior of beams
at other boundary conditions.
For F-F condition, the natural frequency is found to be
maximum for the beam with = 0.1666 with a value of
605.47 Hz and decreases gradually till the last beam with =
1.8333 with a value of 212.68 Hz.

TABLE III.

FUNDAMENTAL FREQUENCY (1)

B. Non-Uniform Beam

1(Hz)

The uniform beam analysed in section II A is modified to

a non-uniform beam with linearly varying height from the
ends to mid-span . Only the height is the variable, whereas
all other parameters remain the same. Two different
geometries are shown in Fig. 2. A number of such
geometries is possible by having a combination of
appropriate heights hm and ho where hm is the height at midspan, ho is the height at the ends and hu is the height of
uniform beam. Also the ratio hm/ hu is taken as . The heights
are so chosen that the mass of the beam remains unchanged
(i.e., same as that of the uniform beam). Beams with various
height ratios are studied to predict the effect of height ratio
on the natural frequencies of the beams.

hm

ho
(a)

hm

hm/hu

SS

F-F

F-P

0.1666

48.90

605.47

203.29

0.3333

65.25

509.06

216.42

0.5

88.62

432.87

219.42

0.6666

107.39

375.16

218.19

0.8333

122.18

333.41

214.49

133.28

302.68

208.83

1.1666

140.78

280.55

201.25

1.3333

144.56

264.28

191.53

1.5

144.13

250.55

178.94

1.6666

139.13

237.52

163.43

1.8333

124.03

212.68

137.70

The plots showing the variation of the first frequencies as

a function of height ratio are given in Fig. 4 which clearly
indicate that the fundamental frequency of SS and F-P
beams becomes maximum at a particular height ratio,
whereas in the case of F-F beam no such trend can be seen.

ho

(b)
Fig.3. (a) SS non uniform beam with linearly decrease in height towards
mid-span, (b) F-P non uniform beam with linearly increase in height
towards the mid-span

1) Effect of height ratio on the fundamental frequency

The first natural frequencies obtained for various height
ratios and for different boundary conditions (i.e., SS, F-F
and F-P) are shown in Table III.
For the SS boundary condition, as is increased from
0.1666 to 1.8333 the first natural frequency value increases
gradually from 48.906 Hz, reaches a peak value and then

Fig.4. Fundamental natural frequency as a function of height ratio

Thus, it can be inferred that in the case of SS and F-P

beams, just by increasing the height at mid-span, it may not
always be possible to increase their fundamental frequency.
The frequency will increase in the beginning with increase
in the thickness at mid-span, but on reaching a particular

value, it will surely be decreased. It can also be understood

that, in the case of F-F beam with the decrease in the midspan height the fundamental frequency can be increased.

2) Effect of height ratio on the second natural

frequency (2)
The second natural frequencies of the beams for different
height ratios and boundary conditions are shown in Table IV
which are illustrated in Fig. 5.
TABLE IV.

SECOND NATURAL FREQUENCY (2)

2 (Hz)

hm/hu

Fig 6. F-F beam with =1.5 showing the 2nd mode

SS

F-F

F-P

0.1666

342.37

831.09

641.21

0.3333

426.77

870.38

667.36

0.5

469.47

881.63

681.77

0.6666

497.97

875.27

686.79

0.8333

515.30

855.69

682.98

522.48

824.31

669.96

1.1666

519.76

781.66

647.32

1.3333

502.62

727.58

614.26

1.5

481.07

659.44

568.21

1.6666

442.25

578.93

509.23

1.8333

371.64

456.51

413.67

3) Effect of height ratio on the second natural

frequency (3)
It is evident from Table V and Fig. 7 that in the case of SS
and F-P boundary conditions the trend is more or less the
same, whereas for the F-F boundary condition third natural
frequencies are decreased with increase in the height ratio.
The variation is similar to that of the fundamental natural
frequency.

Fig .7. F-P beam (=0.3333) 3rd mode

Fig 5. Second natural frequency as a function of height ratio

It is seen that for all the three constrains the second

natural frequency increases gradually from first beam,
reaches a peak value and the gradually reduces toward the
last beam. For SS condition the peak value is found at =1
(522.48 Hz). For F-F condition the peak value is at =0.5
(881.63 Hz). For fixed pinned condition the peak value is at
= 0.666 (686.79 Hz).

Fig.8. Various boundary conditions and height ratio, 3rd natural frequency

TABLE V.

THIRD NATURAL FREQUENCY (3)

3 (Hz)

hm/hu

S-S

F-F

F-P

0.1666

396.87

1626.40

1164.30

0.3333

1069.90

1602.30

1278.80

0.5

1086.20

1608.30

1336.90

0.6666

1099.10

1612.80

1367.20

0.8333

1108.50

1608.11

1380.00

1112.60

1590.80

1377.70

1.1666

1110.90

1558.80

1362.00

1.3333

1103.30

1510.90

1332.90

1.5

1085.60

1441.10

1219.00

1.6666

922.66

1355.50

1108.00

1.8333

437.74

1195.40

1109.10

The peak values of third natural frequencies is found to

be 1112.6 Hz, 1612.8 Hz, 1380 Hz for SS, F-F, and fixed
pinned condition respectively.
F-F and F-P beams
frequencies are gradually varied, whereas SS beams
variation is not so uniform and there is huge deviation
among 1st two values and last two values. There is only
small variation in the rest of the values.
III.

CONCLUSION

Non-uniform beams like tapered , parabolic are found in

bridges, so this motivated us in selecting the geometry. We
have taken linearly varying beam sections for the simplicity
of comparing the height ratios.
Finite element analysis of beams of linearly varying
geometries of different height ratios but with the same mass
is carried out in this paper. The results show that the
fundamental natural frequency of a simply supported beam
becomes maximum at a height ratio of 1.3333, whereas in
the case of fixed- fixed and fixed-pinned beams these ratios
are found to be 0.1666 and 0.5 respectively. Even though the

analysis is performed for a beam with some specific

dimensions, since the height ratio is a non-dimensional
parameter, it is valid for all tapered beams of any arbitrary
length, width and height. The results also prove that increase
in the height of beam at mid-span (increase in moment of
inertia of cross-section) does not necessarily decrease the
deflection and increase the fundamental natural frequency.

IV.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We would like to thank Kamaljith K and Jithin T V

(Department of Mechanical Engineering, Government
College of Engineering Kannur) in helping to complete this
work.

V.

REFERENCE

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[2]

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[4]

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[6]

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