Large Oscillations Around Curled Equilibrium Configurations of Uniformly Loaded Euler–Bernoulli Beams: Numerical and Experimental Evidences

In this paper, we show that equilibrium configurations of a clamped beam under distributed load, resembling a curled pending wire—whose existence has been mathematically established—can be obtained experimentally using ‘soft’ beams, i.e. beams for which the ratio between amplitude of the load and bending stiffness is large enough. Moreover, we introduce a Hencky-type discrete model, i.e. a finite dimensional Lagrangian model, for the ‘soft’ Elastica and build a numerical code for determining its motion, in the most general nonlinear regime. This code is able to qualitatively describe observed nonlinear dynamical behavior.