First, recall Lagrange’s Equations of motion:

Where qi (i = 1...Number of degrees of freedom) are the generalised coordinates.

This is a single degree of freedom system, so there is only one coordinate needed. For this
example, we will choose x, the displacement of the mass in the upper-right-hand corner.
Now we only have one equation of motion, which is:

Next , we need to find an expression for L as a function of our chosen coordinate and its
time derivative. Recall, L = T – V.

Note here that we are going to be linearizing this problem, so we will approximate sin() ≈ 
and cos() = 1. We are assuming small displacements of the system in order to do this, and
we will treat all angles in this way. This is the small-angle approximation, and details will be
omitted in this document. For more information, see the lecture notes on Linearization
and/or sections 1.7.2 and 1.7.5 in Rao.

We will first evaluate the potential energy V of the system and then the kinetic energy T.

The potential energy of the system is the sum of the potential energies of its constituent
parts. Note that none of the masses change height (this is due to the small-angle
approximation for some of them), so we can omit gravitational potential energy as it is
constant.

Thus only 2 pieces of the system store any potential energy: spring k1 and spring k2. Then

where x2 is the (horizontal) displacement of the rigid link with mass m2.

This expression for V depends on both x and x2, so we need to find the relationship between
x and x2 so that we can express V as a function of x only. In deriving the following
relationships, the small-angle approximation is used several times:
The last 2 of these relationships are not yet useful, but we have derived them here because
they will be useful below. Now we can substitute these relationships into one another from
left to right in order to make each one a function of x:

Now we can write V as a function of x by substituting for x2

The kinetic energy of the system is just the sum of the kinetic energies of its constituent
parts. Here we can identify 5 components that will have kinetic energy: the mass m with
displacement x, the pulley with mass moment of inertia Jp and radius rp, the rigid link with
mass m1 and length l1 that is fixed to the pulley, the rigid link with mass m2, and the rolling
cylinder with mass mc and radius rc.

Then T = Tm + Tp + T1 + T2 + Tc

Where

Tm is the kinetic energy of the mass given by

Tp is the kinetic energy of the pulley given by

(Recall that for a rigid body rotating about a fixed point, . I for the pulley is
given as Jp)

T1 is the kinetic energy of the 1st rigid link, which has mass moment of inertia about
point O
 T2 is the kinetic energy of the 2nd rigid link (note that we are assuming that for small
enough movements of the system, the rotation of this link is negligible)

Tc is the kinetic energy of the rolling cylinder (which both rotates and translates).

(Note: is the mass moment of inertia of the cylinder about its centre of mass)

Finally, we have T as the sum of the previous 5 components

Now we need to express T as a function of only. Fortunately, we have already related all
the coordinates to x. Now we only need to take the time derivatives of those relationships.
Noting that everything except for the coordinates is a constant, we get:

Now we can substitute these into our expression for T:

Each term has a and an , so we can pull them out, and re-write
Finally, we have L as a function of x and its time derivative

Now to find our equation of motion we first take

Next, we need

The last piece of Lagrange’s equation is

Now we can put the pieces together to get our equation of motion

At last, we can identify an equivalent mass and equivalent stiffness:

This allows us to write a much simpler EOM:

A bit of simple working (or just knowing observation) allows us to identify the system’s
natural frequency:

Note that we could have chosen another coordinate instead of x (x2, 1, c, etc.), and we
would derive different values for meq and keq. However, the natural frequency would be
unchanged as the physical vibration of the system does not depend on our choice of
coordinates.