Abstract
Stability of a cantilevered system of articulated pipes conveying fluid is studied theoretically and experimentally by considering models having two degrees of freedom. The system is nonconservative and becomes subject to flutter-type or divergence-type instability depending on the system parameters. Firstly the effect of an intermediate lateral spring support on the stability is investigated to show that an additional spring support at the discharge end can be destabilizing. Secondly the combined effect of a spring support and a lumped mass is discussed. It is shown that the stability analysis by neglecting internal damping may result in an erroneous flutter prediction, especially when a big lumped mass is attached to the nonconservative system at its free end. Finally a set of experiments were conducted to verify the theory. Agreement between theory and experiment was satisfactorily good.
