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Theory of Vibration
December 4, 2012

The way material vibrates under given condition is an important aspect of

design of civil structures or mechanical equipment. Historically unexpected
failures of bridges and columns have happened because designers did not
consider e ect of vibration. In this tutorial you will understand
fundamentals of vibration and will learn how to apply it in mechanical / civil
design you undertake.

A simple experiment to understand nature of vibration

Consider following spring-mass system. First spring is given a small initial
stretch second spring is given more stretch. If you measure time period of
oscillation for both the cases you can nd it is same! Both are having a time
period of 6.28 s.

Fig:1 Different initial stretch is given to the same spring-mass system and time period is
measured

This is one big characteristic of vibrating systems, time period of oscillation

does not depend upon initial stretch you give, it is a property of the system.
More commonly used term used in vibrating world is frequency, which is
de ned as follows.

ω 0 = 2ℼ ∕ T

Where T is time period of oscillation. Or one could say frequency of

oscillation is a property of the system. More precise term is natural
frequency, since the system is made up of only sti ness and inertial
components. This is true even for a complicated system, say a bridge,
chimney or an electronic circuit. All of them has got a property called
natural frequency

Mathematical analysis
One can do mathematical analysis of any vibrating system with help of
Newton’s 2nd law of motion. Newton’s second law motion when applied on
mass lead to following di erential equation.

This equation has got many solutions, solution of highest signi cance is
given below.

Where A is initial stretch given to the spring. Graphically it is represented as

shown in below.

Fig:2 Graphical representation of motion of spring-mass system

Where Y is measured downward from equilibrium line, a line where at which

gravitational force and spring force are balanced (represented by blue dotted
line). Time period of oscillation and angular frequency can be derived from
equation above as

So for a simple spring-mass system frequency of vibration is a function of

mass and spring constant.If you substitute values of spring constant and
mass of previous experiment in above equation time period of vibration can
be obtained as 6.28s.

Effect of damping on vibration

You can notice that vibration of mass continues forever in previous case, it
never dies out. But this is not a practical case, what do you see in practice is
something like this. Amplitude of oscillation decreases with time and it
nally dies out. Here we have to consider e ect of air viscous force on mass
in order to simulate this problem more accurately. Damping causes
continuous energy loss to the system, as system loses its energy amplitude
of oscillation decreases.

Fig.3 Amplitude vibration decreases in an actual case due to effect of air viscous force

Forces acting on mass in this case shown in gure below in blue arrows. Here
spring force and viscous(damping) forces are acting on the mass, damping
force is proportional velocity of mass with opposite sign of velocity. E ect of
air viscous force can be represented as a single viscous dash port as shown.
 Fig:4 Forces acting on a damped vibration case

Mathematical solution of this problem can be obtained by applying

Newton’s 2nd law of motion to the system. The di erential equation so
obtained will be

It has got one more term compared to simple spring-mass system case, a
term to incorporate viscous force on mass.

Critical and over damping

Now let us use a highly viscous uid around the mass instead of air. Here
you can nd that vibration dies out much faster and tendency of oscillation
has decreased. As you increase viscosity of uid further tendency for
oscillation further decreases. So there will be a limiting viscosity where
oscillatory behavior of mass completely disappears. This phenomenon is
known as critical damping, where the mass goes back to its equilibrium
position without any oscillation.

Fig:5 As viscosity of surrounding uid is increased tendency for oscillation decreases and
nally a case with no oscillation is reached
Coe cient of viscosity required for achieving critical damping is given by

You can further increase viscosity of surrounding, even above critical

damping limit and notice that here also mass goes to equilibrium position
without any oscillation. This condition is known as overdamped.

Effect of external force – Resonance

When an oscillating external force is applied on mass nature of vibration will
change dramatically. Here oscillating frequency will be same external force
frequency, it is not related natural frequency of the system. Amplitude of
the oscillation is not the initial stretch given by the user, but it will be
strong function of external frequency and natural frequency. Amplitude of
oscillation will become very high when external frequency and natural
frequency values are very close.If external force frequency is same as natural
frequency of material it will result in a phenomenon called resonance, where
amplitude of oscillations become so high and it will eventually result in
damage of material.

Industrial applications
1.The intriguing problem of chimney collapse

Have you ever noticed rings at top of a chimney? What does it signify? We
will go through an incident which happened almost 100 years back. A
chimney which conforms to mechanical strength requirement was erected in
England in 1900s. But surprising engineers who built it,the structure
collapsed one day. An enquiry was launched to investigate what went wrong
in design of the chimney. After a detailed research the enquiry commission
came up with a startling report. Their conclusion was like this.The collapse
happened because designers did not consider e ect of vibration / resonance
of chimney. When wind blows across chimney during a particular wind speed
range a phenomenon called Vortex shedding happens behind the chimney,
here ow vortexes appear and disappear at a particular frequency. This will
induce uctuating force of same frequency on chimney. If frequency of vortex
shedding is same as natural frequency of material of construction this will
lead to resonance. At resonance amplitude of oscillation becomes so large
that structure nally collapses. That exactly what happened for the
chimney.So what could be a solution for this danger. The obvious answer is
prevent Vortex shedding phenomenon, so that the chimney will not vibrate.
And the rings you see on chimney are vortex breakers, which will distract the
ow and spoil vortex formation behind chimney.

2.Why do they spend lot of time on mass balancing?

Even if you fabricate a rotating component at high precision level there will
be mass imbalance in the rotor. Centrifugal force generated by this mass
imbalance is equivalent to a forced vibration case. If you do not balance this
imbalance by a counter mass, it will result in vibration and damage of rotor.

How to build a career in field of vibration?

Excited about eld of vibration? Do you want a build career in this led ? If
answers to these questions are Yes, then an exciting world of NVH
(Noice,Vibration & Harshness) is awaiting you. There are 2 di erent career
streams available according to your interest

1.Experiment al analysis and development

Balancing of rotating components

Noise testing

2.FEA based simulat ion and development

You can simulate almost all the things you do experimentally in computers
using FEA. So it is obvious that you have to have a strong knowledge in
Finite Element Analysis in order to enter this job domain. Anyway before you
start dreaming on this careers rst thing you have to do is gain more in-
depth knowledge on vibration. Hope from this website you got a good
introduction to this led. Now its time to go through some standard text
books and learn more on this eld.
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This article is written by Sabin Mathew, an IIT Delhi postgraduate in

mechanical engineering. Sabin is passionate about understanding
the physics behind complex technologies and explaining them in
simple words. He is the founder of Learn Engineering educational
platform. To know more about the author check this link

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