On the dynamics of viscoelastic discontinuous beams

This paper concerns the dynamics of beams with an arbitrary number of Kelvin–Voigt viscoelastic rotational joints, translational supports, and attached lumped masses. Using the theory of generalized functions to treat the discontinuities of the response variables, the free vibration problem is solved upon deriving exact closed-form eigenfunctions, that inherently fulfill the required conditions at the discontinuity points. The forced vibration response is computed in time and frequency domain by modal superposition, based on appropriate orthogonality conditions of the eigenfunctions.