Dynamics and Stability of Pipes Conveying Fluid

This paper deals with the dynamics and stability of simply supported pipes conveying fluid, where the fluid has a small harmonic component of flow velocity superposed on a constant mean value. The perturbation techniques and the method of averaging are used to convert the nonautonomous system into an autonomous one and determine the stability boundaries. Post-bifurcation analysis is performed for the parametric points in the resonant regions where the axial force, which is induced by the transverse motion of the pipe due to the fixed-span ends and contributes nonlinearities to the equations of motion, is included. For the undamped system, linear analysis is inconclusive about stability and there does not exist nontrivial solution in the resonant regions. For the damped system, it is found that the original stable system remains stable when the pulsating frequency increases cross the stability boundary and becomes unstable when the pulsating frequency decreases cross the stability boundary.