Department of Mechanical Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

ME 7360 Theory of Vibration
Assignment 2

Due on: October 9, 2017

1. The tail of a helicopter has a 40 kg fan which a rotating unbalance of magnitude 0.1 kg-m. The tail portion
can be considered as a cantilevered beam of length 1.2 m with E = 200 × 109 N/m2 , I=1.3 × 10−6 m4 ,
whose material has been specially treated to add viscous damping. As the speed of the fan is varied, it
is noted that its maximum steady-state amplitude is 20.3 mm. What is the fan’s steady-state amplitude
when is operates at 1000 rpm?

Figure 1

2. A 100 kg machine tool is mounted on an elastic foundation. An experiment is run to determine the
stiffness and damping properties of the foundation. When the tool is excited with a harmonic force of
magnitude 10000 N at a variety of frequencies, the maximum steady-state amplitude obtained is 5 mm at
a frequency of 50 Hz. Use this information to estimate the stiffness and damping ratio of the foundation.

3. The landing gear of an airplane can be idealized as the spring-mass-damper system shown in Figure
2. The runway surface is described as y = y0 cos 2πζλ .Assume m = 2000 kg, y0 = 0.2 m and runway
wavelength λ=2.5 m.

(a) If the plane travels at a constant speed of 62.5 m/s, determine the values of k and c that limit the
amplitude of vibration of the airplane (x) to 0.1 m.
(b) what is the acceleration amplitude of the air plane?
(c) Let A be the q
amplitude of the absolute acceleration of the plane. Show that
A 1+(2ζr)2 ω
(ωn )2 Y
= r2 (1−r2 )2 +(2ζr)2
, where r = ωn and ζ is the damping factor.

4. A 120 kg lamp is clamped at the end of a flagpole of 5 m length and 10 cm diameter, as shown in Figure
3. What is the amplitude of the vortex induced vibration to which the lamp is subjected in a 5 m/s wind?
Assume a damping ratio ξ = 0.02 and the mass density of air as ρ = 1.2 kg/m3 .
Note: The wind excitation is characterised by the vortex shedding frequency. The expression is ω =
0.4πv
D . Here v is the flow velocity and D is the pole diameter. Vortex shedding provides a frequency
squared excitation in the form of F = Aω 2 cos(ωt), where A = 0.317ρD3 L, with L being the pole
length.
Hint : Frequency squared excitation has been done earlier in class. Use the knowledge and analytical
steps from that discussion.

5. Show that the response to a unit step function , designated by g(t), is related to the impulsive response
h(t) by the equation h(t) = ġ(t).

1
 Figure 2

Figure 3

6. For the triangular pulse shown in Figure 4, show that the response is given by:

2F0 t τ t

 ( − sin 2π ), 0 < t < 12 t1 ,
k t 2πt τ

 2F 1 t 1 τ


0 2π t
x= (1 − + [2 sin (t − 12 t1 )] − sin 2π ), 1
2 t1 < t < t1 ,
 k t1 2πt 1 τ τ
 2F0 τ 2π 2π t



 ( [2 sin (t − 21 t1 ) − sin (t − t1 ) − sin 2π ]), t > t1
k 2πt1 τ τ τ

Figure 4: Triangular Pulse