Resonance tongues for the Hill equation with Duffing coefficients and instabilities in a nonlinear beam equation

We consider a class of Hill equations where the periodic coefficient is the squared solution of some Duffing equation plus a constant. We study the stability of the trivial solution of this Hill equation and we show that a criterion due to Burdina [Boundedness of solutions of a system of differential equations, Dokl. Akad. Nauk. SSSR 92 (1953) 603-606] is very helpful for this analysis. In some cases, we are also able to determine exact solutions in terms of Jacobi elliptic functions. Overall, we obtain a fairly complete picture of the stability and instability regions. These results are then used to study the stability of nonlinear modes in some beam equations.