Periodic Solutions of a Periodically Forced and Undamped Beam Resting on Weakly Elastic Bearings

We study the problem of existence of periodic solutions to a partial differential equation modelling the behavior of an undamped beam subject to an external periodic force. We assume that the ordinary differential equation associated to the first two modes of vibration of the beam has a symmetric homoclinic solution. By using methods borrowed by dynamical systems theory we prove that, if the period is non resonant with the (infinitely many) internal periods of the PDE, the equation has a weak periodic solution of the same period as the external force. In particular we obtain continua of periodic solutions for the undamped beam in absence of external forces. This result may be considered as an infinite dimensional analogue of a result obtained in [16] concerning accumulation of periodic solutions to homoclinic orbits in finite dimensional reversible systems.