Chapter 4: Vibrations Involving More Than One Degree of Freedom

By Benson H. Tongue

From Principles of Vibration, Second Edition

4.1 INTRODUCTION
Although some systems can be analyzed from a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) standpoint, there are a great many situations for which this viewpoint is simply insufficient. In one example, to be studied in some detail in this chapter, a designer purposely puts an additional degree of freedom in an existing system to modify the original system's vibrational response. The devices that do this are known as vibration absorbers. Automobile designers, when trying to obtain good handling characteristics for their cars, routinely have to include more than just one degree of freedom to capture the various motions the car exhibits, such as yaw, heave, pitch, and roll. Even the simplest model of a steam turbine should include at least two degrees of freedom, while reasonable models for large space structures routinely involve hundreds. The fundamental difference between a multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) system and one with a single degree of freedom is that in the first case we've got additional masses to worry about. The important consequence of this fact is that a sinusoidal response of the MDOF system will automatically imply a relationship between the motions of the various masses in the structure. For instance, the motion of one mass in a 2 DOF system might be described by a cosine and the motion of the other by a cosine having twice the amplitude of the first. Thus, to describe the motion, we should concern ourselves with the relative motion between the two masses, since the fundamental characteristic (cosine oscillations) is...

4.2: FREE RESPONSE UNDAMPED SYSTEM

By Benson H. Tongue

From Principles of Vibration, Second Edition

4.2 FREE RESPONSE UNDAMPED SYSTEM

We'll start by analyzing the system shown in Figure 4.1. External forcings and damping have been excluded for clarity and will be examined later in the chapter.

Figure 4.1: ( a) 2-DOF system and ( b) free body diagram Since 2 DOF problems are easily visualized, can be analytically solved, and can be experimentally demonstrated by using a simple spring with some masses, we'll focus on them when introducing and discussing multi-degree-of-freedom characteristics. The findings, however, will be equally applicable to problems with any desired number of degrees of freedom. As we can see from the free body diagram of Figure 4.1b, the equations of motion for this

system can be written as

and

At this point we'll make the most important transition of the book. Up until now, everything we've been dealing with has involved scalar quantities. But we now have the opportunity to move beyond this stage and into the vector/matrix world, because the foregoing equations can just as easily be reexpressed as

If we define

then we can express (4.2.3) as

Thus we have a form that is, on the surface, identical to that of our SDOF oscillator. The difference now is that our "masses" and "springs" are matrices and our dependent variable is a vector, not a scalar. The definitions just given follow the convention that will be used throughout the rest of the book. Lowercase letters will be used to represent scalar quantities. Thus, when you see something like

4.3: FORCED RESPONSE

By Benson H. Tongue

From Principles of Vibration, Second Edition

4.3 FORCED RESPONSE

If we include the applied forces shown in Figure 4.4, our equations of motion become

Figure 4.4: Forced 2 DOF spring-mass system For simplicity, assume that the forcing is in the form

that is, the magnitudes of the two forces can vary but the frequency is the same for each. As in the SDOF problem, when we have a sinusoidal forcing, we should expect a sinusoidal response. And since the problem has no damping, the output should be in phase or 180 degrees out of phase with the input. Of course, we could use complex exponentials to represent the input and output (and we'll do so for the damped case). But for now we'll stick with an explicit cosine forcing, since the math is simpler without any damping and the cosine solution has a more straightforward physical interpretation. If we let the response be

and substitute this (along with the forcing) into (4.3.1) then we'll obtain

or

where F ? { f 1 f 2}

Unlike (4.2.11), we now have a nonhomogeneous problem; i.e., we're not dealing with [ A] X = O but with [ A] X = F. And unlike the homogeneous case, [ A] must be invertible for a ?1 ?1 solution to exist. If [ A] exists, then we'll premultiply by it to find X = [ A] F. For this 2 DOF example, we can...