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477485, 1999
Printed in Great Britain.
0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00
# 1999 TEMPUS Publications.
INTRODUCTION
MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL vibrations
are routinely covered in courses on ordinary differential equations (ODE's) because they exemplify
mathematical models of the real world [1, 2, 5, 7,
11, 12]. The differential equations are simple, yet
the applications are extremely important to physics
and engineering. The project described in this
paper is an extension of an interdisciplinary
project administered at the US Military Academy
(USMA) last year in an undergraduate Calculus
with Differential Equations course. It was designed
in response to USMA's Civil and Mechanical
Engineering Department's desire for students to
have a better understanding of vibrations and
systems of differential equations.
The project invites students to explore the earthquake-induced mechanical vibrations of buildings.
Students discover both standard and nonstandard
vibration topics while applying concepts in a realistic setting. The project takes full advantage of
analytic, numerical, and qualitative techniques to
address a large range of mathematical and engineering concepts. Throughout, student familiarity
with a computer algebra system (CAS) is assumed.
To prevent students from using technology as a
crutch instead of as a tool, a primary goal of the
project is for students to determine the appropriate
use of the available technology. In some cases,
standard numerical ODE solvers do not perform
well without considerable tinkering. In others,
mu00 u0 ku F t
477
478
u0 u0 ;
u0 0 u1
479
u0 0 u1
_
jyj
;
y_
y0 1;
_
y0
v;
480
where r0 arctan
v
1 f0
7
y_ 1 r0 y_ 0 r0 0
i0
Fig. 4. Undisturbed (dashed line/empty circle) model of a single story building and the nontrivial equilibrium configuration for a
Coulomb damped building for the solution given in Figure 3.
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versus . Note that the final displacement is nonzero and satisfies the restriction j yj < f0 . In
contrast to the exponential decay of viscous damping, the amplitude decays linearly as exemplified by
the linear displacement envelope shown in Fig. 3.
This is readily verified by computing the difference
in amplitude over a full cycle of motion, i.e.
Forced vibrations
In the previous section, we modeled the
unforced vibrations of a building for non-zero
initial conditions. In this section, we consider the
motion of the building during the earthquake
(assuming harmonic forcing). Therefore, the building begins at rest in its upright position and the
movement of the ground causes the building to
move. If uG t is the horizontal displacement of
the ground, then the total lateral deflection is
uT t ut uG t as indicated in Fig. 6.
Students were asked to derive the governing
differential equation assuming
p a ground acceleration of u00G A sin! k=mt m/sec2 . Without
damping, this gives mu00T ku 0, which implies:
r !
k
00
00
t
9
mu ku uG A sin !
m
Fig. 5. Direction field and phase portraits for a Coulomb damped spring-mass system.
482
p
By letting t m=k and u A=ky, we can
rewrite this equation in nondimensional form as:
y y sin!;
y0 0;
_
y0
0:
10
Multi-story buildings
In this section, we model the structural dynamics
of a building consisting of three floors, although
the analysis easily generalizes to n stories. As in the
single-story case, the mass of each floor is modeled
as though it were concentrated at its center of
mass, so the problem essentially reduces to the
interaction of three masses as shown in Fig. 7. For
convenience, assume that the floors have equal
mass, all structural members have equal stiffness,
and the physical constants and ground acceleration are the same as given above.
Students were expected to derive and analyze a
non-dimensionalized system of equations for both
free and forced vibrations. The model is derived
from standard arguments, but differs slightly from
presentations in traditional ODE textbooks since
one end of the spring/mass system is free. If we
ignore damping (no dashpots in Fig. 7) and let ui
be the displacement of the ith floor, then the
governing system of ODE's in matrix form is
given by:
u Au f t;
1
0
2
u1
where u @ u2 A; A @ 1
u3
0
0
1
2
1
1
0
1 A
1
11
483
12
Because the top of the building is free, the eigenvalues are not simple to compute. It is convenient
to find the eigenvalues numerically with a CAS.
The initial conditions:
u1 0 u2 0 0:1;
u3 0 0:1;
u_ 1 0 u_ 2 0 u_ 3 0 0
13
484
14
15
REFERENCES
1. P. Blanchard, R. L. Devaney and G. R. Hall, Differential Equations, Brooks/Cole Publishing
Company, Pacific Grove, California (1998) pp. 146149.
2. W. E. Boyce and R. C. DiPrima, Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems,
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York (1997) pp. 179201.
3. A. K. Chopra, Dynamics of Structures, Theory and Applications to Earthquake Engineering,
Prentice Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle, New Jersey (1995).
4. R. W. Clough and J. Penzien, Dynamics of Structures, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hall, Inc., New York
(1993).
5. P. W. Davis, Differential Equations, Modeling with Matlab, Prentice Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey (1999) pp. 276292.
6. C. H. Edwards, Jr. and D. E. Penney, Differential Equations, Computing and Modeling, PrenticeHall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey (1996) pp. 302304.
Rich Marchand until recently was a Davies Associate at the US Military Academy where he
taught mathematics and conducted research for the Army Research Laboratory in the area
of smart munitions and magnetic design. He received his BS degree in mathematics from
Clarion University of Pennsylvania in 1991. His Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the
University of Virginia was completed in 1996 under the direction of Irena Lasiecka with
concentrations in numerical analysis, control theory and partial differential equations.
Tim McDevitt earned a BS in math and physics from James Madison University in 1991
along with a minor in anthropology. He subsequently earned MAM (1994) and Ph.D.
(1996) degrees from the University of Virginia in Applied Mathematics. Tim is presently an
assistant professor of mathematics at Millersville University in Lancaster, PA where he
teaches applied math courses and conducts research in solid mechanics and partial
differential equations.
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