On the static condensation of initially not rectilinear beams

Abstract Two weakly nonlinear integral equations of motion commonly used in the literature to study the nonlinear dynamics of straight and initially not rectilinear Euler‐Bernoulli beams, respectively, are further investigated. Attention is focused on the process known as “static condensation”, which consists of neglecting the axial inertia in the exact, fully nonlinear system of equations of motion to determine the axial displacement as a function of the transversal one. The novelty of the paper relies on showing that, contrarily to expectation and somehow surprisingly, the integral equation for beams with a not rectilinear initial configuration cannot be obtained by the static condensation process starting from the exact, fully nonlinear, equations of motion, apart from a very particular and specific case. On the contrary, it is confirmed the well‐known result that for rectilinear beams the integral equation can be obtained by the static condensation. This highlights a major difference between the two integral equations in terms of reliability and allows us a better understanding of the integral equation of rectilinear beams, underlying its stronger mathematical background than the classical counterpart for not straight beams (i.e., its being obtainable from the exact, fully nonlinear, equations of motion via static condensation), which provides it with a “special” behavior and makes it more trustworthy.