ES 81 Exercise 4: Higher Order ODE’s

Solutions

READ: Apologies – I’ve been very busy during these days. I’ve only answered few of the exercises here.
Please use the examples here to guide you on how to solve higher order ODE’s. Please practice more by
answering the rest of the exercises on your own.

A. Obtain the solution of the following ODE’s

1)
Solution:
Homogeneous Solution:
Characteristic Equation:

Roots: , (Complex Pair)

Therefore

Particular Solution (Refer to the table I gave)

For
For (-5 + 2x2):

For :

Therefore,

Grouping Coefficients,

Therefore

For :

Therefore,
Grouping Coefficients,

Therefore,

Hence the general solution is:

Now, let’s check using wolframalpha.com

You will get this answer:

Which proves that the answer is right.

2)
Homogeneous Solution:
Characteristic Equation:

Roots: , (Complex Pair)

Therefore

Particular Solution:
Since is not anymore in the table, you need to determine the family of the
curve. Differentiate several times until you can visualize its family.

{ }
You can visualize that its family is in the form
Therefore,

BUT!: is a duplicate term as found in . Therefore multiply by to obtain the

new without duplication.

Now it’s safe to find and

Then we substitute,

Solving, we got:
Therefore,

Hence, the general solution is:

NOTE: If initial values were given, find the values of C 1 and C2 once the general
solution is already found.
B. Obtain the solution of the following System of ODE’s

1)

Rearrange the system of ODE:

Let then,

Matrix Form:
[ ][ ] [ ]

Solve for x and y using Cramer’s Rule

| |

| |

| |

Therefore,

3 [1]

And

4 [2]

Solve [1] and [2] using the method of undetermined coefficients and you
will obtain:

NOTES: The homogeneous solutions of the dependent variables in a linear system of

ODE are all in the same form. But the coefficients will of course be different as it
depends on the given initial values.
 If you want to check your solution in wolfram alpha, invoke the ff code in
wolframalpha:

Solve[{x'(t)=2x(t)+6y(t)-t+7, y'(t)=2x(t)-2y(t)}]

And you will obtain:

The solution is quite long but if you simplify it, you will get the same result.

C. (For 1 and 2, I've discussed them during my lectures._)

3. For the mass-spring system below, m = 4, k = 10, f(t) = 0. Find the damping
constant c that will make the system critically damped

Characteristic Equation:

Quadratic Formula,
√

To make the system critically damped, the roots of the characteristic equation
should be equal. To make this happen the discriminant should be
zero.