Abstract
IN your account (NATURE, May 10, p. 43) of Dr. J. Hopkinson's “James Forrest” lecture at the institution of Civil Engineers, appears the following statement: “Another example, having a certain degree of similarity with the case of struts, is that of a shaft running at a high number of revolutions per minute, and with a substantial distance between its bearings. …How will the shaft behave itself in regard to centrifrugal force as the speed increases? In this case, so long as the shaft remains absolutely straight it will not tend to be in any way affected by the centrifugal force, but suppose the shaft becomes slightly bent, it is obvious to anyone that if the speed be enormously high this bending will increase, and go on increasing until the shaft breaks. In this case also we may use mathematical treatment; we find that the condition of the shaft is expressed by a differential equation of the fourth order, and from consideration of the solution of this equation we can say that if the speed of any particular shaft be less than a certain critical speed, the shaft will tend to straighten itself if it be momentarily bent, but that, on the other hand, if the speed exceeds this critical value, the bending will tend to increase with the probable destruction of the shaft.” (The italics are mine.)
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CHREE, C. Rotating Shafts. Nature 50, 78 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/050078b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/050078b0
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