AA 242B / ME 242B: Mechanical Vibrations

(Spring 2016)

Homework #1
Due April 10, 2016

Problem 1 (from J. L. Humar, Dynamics of Struc-

tures)
A car and its suspension system are idealized as shown in Figure 1. The car body
together with the occupants is considered to be a rigid body with total weight
W and radius of giration r for pitching motion about an axis perpendicular to
the paper and passing through the centroid. The suspension system supporting
each axle is represented by a spring of stiffness kS and a viscous damper with
damping coefficient cS . Weights w applied to the top of front and rear tires
represent the weight of chassis and axles. The stiffness of a pair of tires is kT .
The car undergoes vibrations involving bounce and pitch.

• Identify the degrees of freedom of the system.

• Using the Lagrange equations, obtain the equations of motion and write
them in matrix form.

Problem 2 (from J. L. Humar, Dynamics of Struc-

tures)
A vehicle traveling across a bridge deck is represented by an unsprung mass mt
connected to a spring mass mv through a spring stiffness k and a damper of
coefficient c (see Figure 2). The bridge deck has a span L, a uniform mass per
unit length m̄, and flexural rigidity EI. The vehicle is traveling across the deck
at a constant speed of v. If the vibration shape of the deck is Φ(x) = sin(πx/L),
obtain the equations of motion for the system.
Note: the potential energy functional of an Euler-Bernouilli beam of length
 2 2
1 L
Z Z L
∂ w
L and flexural rigidity EI is P(x) = EI dx − qwdx, where
2 0 ∂x2 0
w(x) denotes the transverse displacement of the beam and q(x) the applied
transverse load defined in units of force per length.

1
 Figure 1: Idealization of a car and its suspension system.

Figure 2: Idealization of a vehicle traveling across a bridge deck.