Many structures and machines are made up from components (rods, beams and plates) which are joined together by welds, bolts or rivets. The mechanical behaviour of such built-up systems is greatly affected by the properties of their joints which are usually compliant and dissipative.In this work, a general solution for the vibrational energy flows through a plane network of beams is sought, based on the receptance approach. The joints between any two elements are assumed to act at discrete points and are modelled by three sets of springs and dashpots, thus being compliant and non-conservative in all the three degrees of freedom relevant to this case. The beams are assumed to be slender and elastic, and the deflections at the joint are assumed to be small, so that conventional linear beam theory may be used in the analysis. The aim of this study is to give greater insight into the problem of non-conservative coupling, which has not been extensively discussed in the literature. Interest is focused on the effect of damping in the joints on the magnitudes of energy flows between, and energy levels in, each beam. Variations in the energy flows through a compliant joint between two beams with changes in their coupling angle are also discussed. Numerical examples which illustrate these various ideas are presented.
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