In-plane free vibration analysis of curved Timoshenko beams by the pseudospectral method

The pseudospectral method is applied to the analysis of in-plane free vibration of circularly curved Timoshenko beams. The analysis is based on the Chebyshev polynomials and the basis functions are chosen to satisfy the boundary conditions. Natural frequencies are calculated for curved beams of rectangular and circular cross sections under hinged-hinged, clamped-clamped and hinged-clamped end conditions and the results are compared with those by transfer matrix method. The present method gives good accuracy with only a limited number of collocation points.