1.

An accelerometer indicates that a structure is vibrating harmonically at 82

cps with a maximum acceleration of 50 g. Determine the amplitude of
vibration.
An object in harmonic motion has a position given by

Where A is the amplitude and f is the linear frequency. Differentiate the position with
respect to time to get the velocity.

Differentiate the velocity with respect to time to get the acceleration.

The maximum acceleration is

Set it equal to 50g and f = 82 cycles per second and solve the equation for A.

Therefore, noting that g ≈ 9.81 m/s 2 ,

2. A harmonic motion has a frequency of 10 cps and its maximum velocity is

4.57 m/s. Determine its amplitude, its period, and its maximum acceleration.

The period τ is the reciprocal of the linear frequency f.

An object in harmonic motion has a position given by

Where A is the amplitude of vibration. Differentiate the position with respect to time to
get the velocity.
 The maximum velocity is:

Set it equal to 4.57 m/s and f = 10 cycles per second and solve the equation for A.

Differentiate the
velocity with respect to time to get the acceleration.

We conclude that the maximum acceleration is

3. A harmonic motion has an amplitude of 0.20 cm and a period of 0.15 sec.

Determine the maximum velocity and acceleration.

The frequency is given as

The maximum velocity is given as

The maximum acceleration is given as

4. A car and its suspension system are idealized as a damped spring mass
system, with natural frequency 0.5Hz and damping coefficient 0.2.  Suppose
the car drives at speed V over a road with sinusoidal roughness.  Assume the
roughness wavelength is 10m, and its amplitude is 20cm.  At what speed
does the maximum amplitude of vibration occur, and what is the
corresponding vibration amplitude?
 Let s denote the distance traveled by the car, and let L denote the wavelength of the
roughness and H the roughness amplitude.  Then, the height of the wheel above the mean
road height may be expressed as

Noting that  , we have that

i.e., the wheel oscillates vertically with harmonic motion, at frequency   .

 
Now, the suspension has been idealized as a spring - - - mass system subjected to base
excitation.  The steady state vibration is

For light damping, the maximum amplitude of vibration

occurs at around the natural frequency.  Therefore, the critical speed follows from

Note that K=1 for base excitation, so that the amplitude of vibration at   is
approximately

Note that at this speed, the suspension system is making the vibration worse.  The
amplitude of the car’s vibration is greater than the roughness of the road.  Suspensions
work best if they are excited at frequencies well above their resonant frequencies. 

5. The suspension system discussed in the preceding problem has the following
specifications.  For the roadway described in the preceding section, the
amplitude of vibration may not exceed 35cm at any speed.  At 55 miles per
hour, the amplitude of vibration must be less than 10cm.  The car weighs
3000lb.  Select values for the spring stiffness and the dashpot coefficient. 
 We must first determine values for   and   that will satisfy the design
specifications. To this end:

(i)     The specification requires that

At resonance.  Examine the graph

of   shown with the solutions to the equations of
motion.  Recall that K=1 for a base excited spring mass
system.  Observe that, with , the amplification factor
never exceeds 1.75. 
(ii)   Now, the frequency of excitation at 55mph is

We must choose system parameters so that, at this excitation

frequency,  . Examine the graph showing the response of a base excited
spring - mass system again. We observe that, for ,   for  .  Therefore,
we pick  .

Finally, we can compute properties of the system.  We have that

Similarly,

 
 
1. Take the spring and mass system from the first example and attach a damper
to it that will exert a force of 12 lbs when the velocity is 2 ft/s. Find the
displacement at any time t u (t).

To do this we will use the formula for the damping force given above with one
modification. The original damping force formula is,

However, remember that the force and the velocity are always
acting in opposite directions. So, if the velocity is upward (i.e. negative) the force will be
downward (i.e. positive) and so the minus in the formula will cancel against the minus in
the velocity. Likewise, if the velocity is downward (i.e. positive) the force will be
upwards (i.e. negative) and in this case the minus sign in the formula will cancel against
the minus in the force. In other words, we can drop the minus sign in the formula and use

and then just ignore any signs for the force and velocity.

Doing this gives us the following for the damping coefficient

The IVP for this example is then,

To do this all we need is the critical damping coefficient.

So, it looks like we’ve got critical damping. Note that this means that when we go to
solve the differential equation we should get a double root.
2. The block shown to the right rests on a frictionless surface. Find the
response of the system if the block is displaced from its static equilibrium
position 15 cm to the right and released from rest.
m = 4.0 kg, b = 0.25 N/(m/s), k1 = 1.5 N/m, k2 = 0.50 N/(m/s).

An appropriate free-body diagram is shown to the right. Notice that

the two springs are effectively in parallel, as the displacement across
each spring is identical. Linear momentum balance on this block
provides

or, writing this in standard form

Further, the system is released from rest so that the initial conditions are

3. In the figure, the disk has mass m, radius r, and moment of inertia IG about
the mass center, and the applied moment has a constant magnitude M ˆ k. If
the disk rolls without slip (µ is sufficiently large):
a) Determine the governing equations of
motion;
b) What are the equivalent mass, stiffness, and
damping of the system;
c) What is the stretch in the spring when the
system is in equilibrium?

a) The governing equations of motion are:

b) The equivalent mass, damping, and stiffness

are:
 c) When the system is in equilibrium, the displacement of the disk is:

4. Take the spring and mass system from the first example
and this time let’s attach a damper to it that will exert a force of 17 lbs when
the velocity is 2 ft/s. Find the displacement at any time t u (t).

So, the only difference between this example and the previous example is damping force.
So, let’s find the damping coefficient

So, it looks like we’ve got over damping this time around so we should expect to get two

real distinct roots from the characteristic equation and they should both be negative. The
IVP for this example is,
This one’s a little messier than the previous example so we’ll do a couple of the steps,
leaving it to you to fill in the blanks. The roots of the characteristic equation are
In this case it will be easier to just convert to decimals and go that route. Note that, as
predicted we got two real, distinct and negative roots. The general and actual solution for

this example are then,

5. A 3 kg object is attached to spring and will stretch the spring 392 mm by

itself. There is no damping in the system and a forcing function of the
is attached to the object and the system will experience resonance. If the
object is initially displaced 20 cm downward from its equilibrium position
and given a velocity of 10 cm/sec upward find the displacement at any
time t

Since we are in the metric system we won’t need to find mass as it’s been given to us.
Also, for all calculations we’ll be converting all lengths over to meters.

The first thing we need to do is find k.

Now, we are told that the system experiences

resonance so let’s go ahead and get the natural frequency so we can completely set up the
IVP.

The IVP for this is then

Solution wise there isn’t a whole lot to do here. The complementary solution is the free
undamped solution which is easy to get and for the particular solution we can just use the
formula that we derived above.

The general solution is then,

Applying the initial conditions gives the displacement at any time t. We’ll leave the
details to you to check.

The last thing that we’ll do is combine the first two terms into a single cosine.
In this case the coefficient of the cosine is positive and the coefficient of the sine is
negative. This forces cosδ to be positive and sinδ to be negative. This means that the
phase shift needs to be in Quadrant IV and so the first one is the correct phase shift this
time.

The displacement then becomes,

Introduction to Mechanical
Vibration
Basics of Vibrations
Principles of Active Vibration
Control
Forced Vibration (Damped &
Undamped)
Equivalent Viscous Damping:
System with Base Excitation
Vibration Measurement
SOLVED PROBLEMS