Principal resonance of parametrically excited moving viscoelastic belts with geometrical nonlinearity

Nonlinear dynamic analysis is performed on moving belts subjected to geometric nonlinearity and initial tension fluctuation. To incorporate more accurately the damping mechanism of belt material, linear viscoelastic models are adopted in a unified form of differential operators. To circumvent high-order differential vibration equation of time-varying coefficients and with gyroscopic and nonlinear terms, where analytical solution is almost impossible, a systematic approach is presented by reforming the motion equation and directly using the method of multiple scales. To exemplify the procedure, the solutions at principal resonance are obtained and their stability conditions are derived for employing a Kelvin-Voigt model to reflect the property of the belt material. The solutions and stability conditions successfully reduce to those for using Kelvin model and elastic model, which validate the present approaches. Numerical simulations highlight the effects of tension fluctuations and translating speeds on the stability of the belt vibration.