Nonlinear oscillations and dynamic stability of an elastoplastic pyramidal truss

Pyramidal space trusses are currently used in many present-day engineering applications, either as main parts or as a constitutive element. The present work studies, using a corotational finite element formulation considering large displacements and rotations and an elastoplastic material behavior with isotropic strain hardening, the nonlinear dynamic behavior of a pyramidal space truss. A bilinear hysteretic model with kinematic hardening is used to represent the material nonlinearity. An appropriate strain measure in such processes is the logarithmic strain. However, the engineering strain and the quadratic strain measures have been usually used to perform the elastic stability analysis of such structures. Thus, in the present work results using both the quadratic and the logarithmic strain measures are compared. First, the static nonlinear behavior is investigated in order to understand the influence of nonlinearities and static preload on the potential energy landscape, which controls the dynamics of the truss. These structures exhibit a two-well potential function that leads to coexisting in-well and cross-well solution branches, resulting in several coexisting periodic, quasi-periodic and chaotic attractors. The influence of the constitutive law, strain measure, truss geometry and support flexibility on the static stability is then investigated. Based on these results, a detailed parametric analysis of the nonlinear truss response under vertical load is conducted using bifurcations diagrams of the Poincare map to investigate the effect of the constitutive law, strain measure, truss geometry and load control parameters on the bifurcation scenario, coexisting attractors and dynamic buckling loads. The effect of the strain hardening parameter is particularly emphasized, allowing a more comprehensive picture of the dynamical behavior exhibited by the bistable system. Properties of the response are further illustrated by samples of time and phase plane responses and the related Poincare section plots. In addition to known behaviors, a rich class of solutions and bifurcations, including jump phenomena, symmetry-breaking, period-doubling cascades, fold and chaos is detected.