5.3 Free vibration of a damped, single degree of freedom, linear spring mass system.
We analyzed vibration of several conservative systems in the preceding section. In each case, we found that if the system was set in motion, it continued to move indefinitely. This is counter to our everyday experience. Usually, if you start something vibrating, it will vibrate with a progressively decreasing amplitude and eventually stop moving.
The reason our simple models predict the wrong behavior is that we neglected energy dissipation. In this section, we explore the influence of energy dissipation on free vibration of a spring-mass system. As before, although we model a very simple system, the behavior we predict turns out to be representative of a wide range of real engineering systems.
5.3.1
Vibration of a damped spring-mass system
The
spring mass dashpot system shown is released with velocity from position
at time
. Find
.
Once again, we follow the standard approach to solving problems like this
(i) Get a differential equation for s using F=ma
(ii) Solve the differential equation.
You may have forgotten what a dashpot (or damper)
does. Suppose we apply a force F to a dashpot, as shown in the figure. We
would observe that the dashpot stretched at a rate proportional to the force
One can buy dampers (the shock absorbers in your car contain dampers): a damper generally consists of a plunger inside an oil filled cylinder, which dissipates energy by churning the oil. Thus, it is possible to make a spring-mass-damper system that looks very much like the one in the picture. More generally, however, the spring mass system is used to represent a complex mechanical system. In this case, the damper represents the combined effects of all the various mechanisms for dissipating energy in the system, including friction, air resistance, deformation losses, and so on.
To proceed, we draw a free body diagram, showing the
forces exerted by the spring and damper on the mass.
Newton’s law then states that
This is our equation of motion for s.
Now, we check our list of solutions to differential equations, and see that we have a solution to:
We can get our equation into this form by setting
As before, is known as the natural frequency of the
system. We have discovered a new
parameter,
,
which is called the damping coefficient. It plays a very important role, as we shall
see below.
Now, we can write down the solution for x:
Overdamped System
where
Critically Damped System
Underdamped System
where is known as the damped natural frequency of
the system.
In all the preceding equations,
are the values of x and its time derivative at time t=0.
These
expressions are rather too complicated to visualize what the system is doing
for any given set of parameters. Instead,
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Engineering/Courses/En4/java/free.html
contains a Java Applet that can be used
to show animations along with graphs of the displacement. You can use the sliders to set the values of
either m, k, and (in this case the program will calculate the
values of
and
for you, and display the results), or
alternatively, you can set the values of
and
directly.
You can also choose values for the initial conditions
and
. When you press `start,’ the applet will
animate the behavior of the system, and will draw a graph of the position of
the mass as a function of time. You can
also choose to display the phase plane, which shows the velocity of the mass as
a function of its position, if you wish.
You can stop the animation at any time, change the parameters, and plot
a new graph on top of the first to see what has changed. If you press `reset’, all your graphs will be
cleared, and you can start again.
Try the following tests to familiarize yourself with the behavior of the system
Set the dashpot coefficient
to a low value, so that the damping coefficient
. Make sure the graph is set to display
position versus time, and press `start.’ You should see the system
vibrate. The vibration looks very
similar to the behavior of the conservative system we analyzed in the preceding
section, except that the amplitude decays with time. Note that the system vibrates at a frequency
very slightly lower than the natural frequency of the system.
Keeping the value of
fixed, vary the values of spring constant and
mass to see what happens to the frequency of vibration and also to the rate of
decay of vibration. Is the behavior
consistent with the solutions given above?
Keep the values
of k and m fixed, and vary
. You should see that, as you increase
,
the vibration dies away more and more quickly.
What happens to the frequency of oscillations as
is increased?
Is this behavior consistent with the predictions of the theory?
Now, set the
damping coefficient (not the dashpot coefficient this time) to
. For this value, the system no longer
vibrates; instead, the mass smoothly returns to its equilibrium position x=0.
If you need to design a system that returns to its equilibrium position
in the shortest possible time, then it is customary to select system parameters so that
. A system of this kind is said to be critically damped.
Set
to a value greater than 1. Under these conditions, the system decays
more slowly towards its equilibrium configuration.
Keeping
>1, experiment with the effects of changing
the stiffness of the spring and the value of the mass. Can you explain what is happening
mathematically, using the equations of motion and their solution?
Finally, you
might like to look at the behavior of the system on its phase plane. In this course, we will not make much use of
the phase plane, but it is a powerful tool for visualizing the behavior of
nonlinear systems. By looking at the
patterns traced by the system on the phase plane, you can often work out what
it is doing. For example, if the
trajectory encircles the origin, then the system is vibrating. If the
trajectory approaches the origin, the system is decaying to its equilibrium
configuration.
We now know the effects of energy dissipation on a vibrating system. One important conclusion is that if the energy dissipation is low, the system will vibrate. Furthermore, the frequency of vibration is very close to that of an undamped system. Consequently, if you want to predict the frequency of vibration of a system, you can simplify the calculation by neglecting damping.
5.3.2 Using Free Vibrations to Measure Properties of a System
We will describe one very important application of the results developed in the preceding section.
It often happens that we need to measure the dynamical properties of an engineering system. For example, we might want to measure the natural frequency and damping coefficient for a structure after it has been built, to make sure that design predictions were correct, and to use in future models of the system.
You can use the free vibration response to do this, as follows. First, you instrument your design by attaching accelerometers to appropriate points. You then use an impulse hammer to excite a particular mode of vibration, as discussed in Section 5.1.3. You use your accelerometer readings to determine the displacement at the point where the structure was excited: the results will be a graph similar to the one shown below.
We then identify a nice
looking peak, and call the time there ,
as shown.
The following quantities are then measured from the graph:
1. The period of oscillation. The period of oscillation was defined in Section 5.1.2: it is the time between two peaks, as shown. Since the signal is (supposedly) periodic, it is often best to estimate T as follows
where is the time at which the nth peak occurs, as shown in the picture.
2. The Logarithmic Decrement. This is a new quantity, defined as follows
where is the displacement at the nth peak, as shown. In principle, you should be able to pick any
two neighboring peaks, and calculate
. You should get the same answer, whichever
peaks you choose. It is often more
accurate to estimate
using the following formula
This expression should give the same answer as the earlier definition.
Now, it turns out that we
can deduce and
from T
and
,
as follows.
Why
does this work? Let us calculate T
and using the exact solution to the equation of
motion for a damped spring-mass system.
Recall that, for an underdamped system, the solution has the form
where .
Hence, the period of oscillation is
Similarly,
where we have noted that .
Fortunately, this horrendous equation can be simplified
greatly: substitute for T in terms of and
,
then cancel everything you possibly can to see that
Finally, we can solve for and
to see that:
as promised.
Note that this procedure can
never give us values for k, m or . However, if we wanted to find these, we could
perform a static test on the structure.
If we measure the deflection d
under a static load F, then we know
that
Once k had been
found, m and are easily deduced from the relations