Unsteady behavior of an elastic articulated beam floating on shallow water

The unsteady behavior of an elastic beam composed of hinged homogeneous sections, which freely floats on the surface of an ideal incompressible fluid, is studied within the framework of the linear shallow water theory. The unsteady behavior of the beam is due to incidence of a localized surface wave or initial deformation. Beam deflection is sought in the form of an expansion with respect to eigenfunctions of oscillations in vacuum with time-dependent amplitudes. The problem is reduced to solving an infinite system of ordinary differential equations for unknown amplitudes. The beam behavior with different actions of the medium and hinge positions is studied.