The dynamic response of a supercritical composite shaft is inherently nonlinear and constitutes a critical aspect of its structural and operational design. In this work, a flexible composite shaft operating in an ultra-supercritical turbine regime is idealized as a cantilever beam. A combined experimental, numerical, and analytical framework is employed to characterize the nonlinear flexural response of the CFRP cantilever subjected to high-frequency external base excitation. The governing equations of motion are formulated by incorporating inertia-related nonlinear effects. Despite excitation in the vicinity of the third flexural mode, the system response is predominantly governed by the first bending mode, indicating strong nonresonant modal coupling. As the excitation amplitude is increased from 0.8 g to 2.8 g, the modulation sidebands around the third-mode frequency space out from 1.8 Hz to 4.1 Hz, while the amplitude of the induced nonresonant response associated with the first mode decreases monotonically from 2.2 g to 0.02 g. This intermodal energy transfer between widely separated modes is attributed to the presence of cubic nonlinearities inherent to the laminated composite material.
Maqbool et al. (Fri,) studied this question.