Chapter 1.

Brief Review of Linear Vibration Theory

This chapter briefly reviews the basics of linear vibration.

1.1. Vibration terminology

Vibration: Any motion that repeats itself after an interval of time is known
as vibration or oscillation (Rao, 2010).
Degree of freedom: The minimum number of independent coordinates
required to determine completely the positions of all parts of a system at any
instant of time.
Discrete or Lumped parameter system: Systems with a finite degrees of
freedom.
Continuous or distributed system: Systems with an infinite degrees of
freedom. Most structural and machine systems have deformable (elastic)
members and therefore are continuous systems. However, because these
systems have equations of motion as partial differential equations which are
difficult to solve as compared to ordinary differential equations of lumped mass
system, and hence most of the practical systems are studied by treating them as
finite lumped masses, springs and dampers.
Free vibration: If a system after an initial disturbance is left to vibrate on
its own then the resulting vibration is known as free vibration.
Force vibration: If a system is subjected to an external force, the
resulting vibration is known as the forced vibration.
Undamped vibration: If no energy is lost or dissipated in friction or other
resistance during oscillation, the vibration is known as the undamped vibration. If

amount of damping is small then the system can be considered as undamped

system.
Damped vibration: If any energy is lost or dissipated in friction or other
resistance then the vibration is known as the damped vibration.
Deterministic vibration: If the value of the excitation (force or motion)
acting on the vibratory system is known at any given time, the excitation is called
deterministic and the resulting vibration is known as deterministic vibration.
Random vibration: If the value of the excitation at a given time cannot be
predicted accurately then the excitation is known as the random excitation and
the resulting vibration as random vibration. In such cases a large collection of
records of excitation may exhibit some statistical regularity. It is possible to
estimate averages such as mean and mean square values of the excitation.
Road roughness, wind velocity and ground motion during earthquakes are few
examples of random vibration.
Linear vibration: If all the basic components of the vibratory system i.e.
spring, mass and damper behave linearly then the resulting vibration is known as
the linear vibration. These vibrations have equations of motion as linear
differential equations which obeys the principle of superposition. Solution
methods to such equations are readily available and are easy to apply.
Nonlinear vibration: If any of the basic component of the vibratory
system behaves nonlinearly then the resulting vibration is nonlinear vibration.
The equations of motion are nonlinear differential equations and unlike linear
systems these do not obey the principle of superposition and analysis techniques
are less well known.
Cycle of vibration: The movement of the vibrating body from its
undisturbed or equilibrium position to its extreme position in one direction then to
the equilibrium position and then to its extreme position in other direction and
back to the equilibrium position is known as a cycle of vibration.
Amplitude: The maximum displacement of a vibrating body from its
equilibrium position. It is denote by A.

Period of oscillation: Time taken to complete one cycle of motion. It is

denoted by

and measured in seconds.

Frequency of oscillation: The number of cycles per unit time is known as

the linear frequency of oscillation. It is denoted by f and
seconds-1 or Hertz (Hz). The circular frequency
is given by =2 f =

f=

and measured in

is measured in rad/sec and

2
.

Synchronous motion: Motions with the same frequency. Amplitudes of

the motions may or may not be the same.
Phase angle: The angle at which one motion leads or lags the other
motion and is denoted by

Natural frequency: Frequency at which the system vibrates in the

absence of any driving force or damping force. A discrete system with N degrees
of freedom has N distinct natural frequencies and a continuous system has
infinite natural frequencies. Angular and linear natural frequencies are denoted
by n and

f n respectively.

Resonance: If the frequency of external force coincides with one of the

natural frequency of the system, a condition known as resonance occurs and the
system undergoes very large oscillations. Buildings, bridges, turbines and
airplane failures are associated with the occurrence of resonance.
Periodic motion: The motion that is repeated after an equal interval of
time.
Simple Harmonic motion: Vibration with the acceleration proportional to
the displacement and directed toward the mean position. For example
x= A sin t , is a simple harmonic motion, where t is time.

Beats: The phenomenon of the resulting motion due to addition of two

harmonic motions with frequencies close to one another.
Octave: When the maximum value of a range of frequency is twice its
minimum value, it is known as an octave band. Frequency range with a ratio of

maximum to minimum as 2:1 such as 75-150 Hz, 150-300 Hz are the octave
bands.

1.2. Free vibration of single degree of freedom system

Consider a single degree of freedom mass-spring-damper (here damper is
viscous) system subjected to free vibration as shown in Figure 1. The right hand
side figure shows the free body diagram of mass m. As can be seen that when
mass m is attached to the spring with stiffness k, the upward spring force (
k ( x + st ) ) due to the static deflection

st

exactly balances its weight ( mg ).

Figure 1 single degree of freedom system with viscous damper

The equation of motion of the system can be given by:

m x +c x +kx=0

(1)

Equation 1 is second order, linear, homogeneous ordinary differential

equation and the independent variable is time (t) and dependent variable or
response of the system is displacement x. By assuming the solution to be
x ( t )=C e st

and substituting this into equation 1 leads to the characteristic

equation as shown below:

2

m s + cs+k =0

(2)

Equation 2 is a quadratic in s and thus it has two roots which give two
solutions to equation (1) and thus the general solution to equation (1) can be
written as:

x ( t )=C 1 e + 1 t +C 2 e( 1) t
(

Here,

is the damping ratio and is given by

critical damping co-efficient which is given by

mass and spring constant

(3)

c
cc

and

cc

is the

c c =2 m n=2 km . For constant

increases with an increase of damping constant

c, this means higher the damping factor higher the damping constant. The
solution as shown in equation (3) depends on the value of

and are

discussed in the following cases.

1.2.1.

Underdamped system ( <1 )

When <1

the roots of equation (2) are unequal and complex and the

solution as shown in equation (3) is given by:

x ( t )=X e t sin (1 2 n t+ )
1 C 1
X = C 12+ C22 , =tan
C2
x + n x 0
C1 =x0 , C2 = 0
d

(4)

( )

Here,
system and

x0

(5)
(6)

x 0

are initial (at t = 0) displacement and velocity of the

d=n 1 2

is the damped natural frequency of the system and

and

it is always less than

n . Equation (4) shows that the motion is periodic and

decaying exponentially.

1.2.2.

Critically damped system ( =1 )

When =1

the roots of equation (2) are equal and real and the solution

as shown in equation (3) is given by:

x ( t )=e t ( C 1+C 2 t )
C1 =x0 , C2 = x0 + n
n

(7)
(8)

1.2.3.

Overdamped system ( >1 )

When >1

the roots of equation (2) are unequal and real and the

solution as shown in equation (3) is given by:

x ( t )=X e t sin ( 2 1 n t+ )
1 C 1
X =C 12+ C22 , =tan
C2
n

( )

C1 =
C2 =

x0 + n x 0 ( + 2 1 )
2 n 21

x
0 n x 0 ( 21 )
2 n 21

(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)

Equation (9) shows that the motion is aperiodic and is exponentially

decaying.

1.2.4.

Logarithmic decrement
The logarithmic decrement ( ) represents the rate at which the

amplitude of a free-damped vibration decreases. It is defined as the natural

logarithm of the ratio of any two successive amplitudes. One of the application of
using

to get unknown system parameters is explained as follows.

By running a free vibration test on the system (under-damped) as shown

in figure with the use of accelerometers and vibration data acquisition system,
one can get the response of the system in time domain. For example, let us
consider the system response to be as shown in .

Figure 2 Typical time response of an underdamped system

Now

=ln

x1
2
=
, so knowing
x2 1 2

shown in figure 2 would give us the value of

value of damping factor as,

(2 ) +
2

x1

and

x2

and that in turn gives us the

experimentally as

. If we know spring stiffness k and

mass m also then we can find the damping constant of the system as,
c=2 km .

1.2.5.

MATLAB Example-1
Consider m = 200kg, k = 23584 N/m and c = 554 Ns/m, and initial

displacement and velocity to be 0 m and 1.4 m/s respectively (Rao, 2010). Using
analytical solutions, Figure 3 shows the system response in time domain and
phase plane.
The MATLAB code for this example is given in Appendix
As can be observed from Figure 3 that the system response is oscillatory
and exponentially decaying and thus the system is underdamped, the MATLAB
codes also calculates the value of
returns the value of
and

and if the system is underdamped then

as well. In this example these values are

=0.1275

=0.8080 . Moreover, since the system is underdamped the phase plot

has rotations (oscillations).

The same example when solved by numerical methods using MATLAB
tool ODE45 by MATLAB and Simulink its response in the similar way is shown in
Figure 4 and Figure 5 respectively. The code and model file is shown in Appendix
A.

Figure 3 Response and phase plots for example 1 using analytical solution

Figure 4 Response and phase plots for example 1 using MATLAB script

Figure 5 Response and phase plots for example 1 using Simulink

The close resemblance of figures 4 and 5 with figure 3 show the

effectiveness of the numerical methods in solving linear vibration problems.
ODE45 is based on an explicit Runge-Kutta (4,5) numerical method to solve
initial value problems with ordinary differentials.

1.3. Forced vibration of single degree of freedom system

Excitation to the system can be divided into two groups, (i) harmonic
excitation and (ii) general excitation. In this section only harmonic excitation is
presented because of its simplicity and the fact that by using Fourier series many
nonharmonic excitation can be presented as an infinite series of harmonic terms
(Inman, 2013).
Consider the single degree of freedom system subjected to harmonic
excitation

F ( t )=F 0 cos t

system is as follows:

as shown in Figure 6. The equation of motion of the

Figure 6 Single degree of freedom system forced vibration

m x +c x + kx=F 0 cos t

(13)

x (t )

Since this equation is nonhomogeneous its general total solution

xh ( t )

has two parts: homogeneous solution

Where,

xh ( t )

and particular solution

x p(t ) .

is the solution to equation (13) without any external excitation,

which corresponds to the transient part of the total solution and eventually dies
out as time increases and
total solution

x p(t )

corresponds to the steady-state part of the

x ( t ) . Particular solution to equation (13) is as shown below.

x p ( t )=X cos ( t )
F0
X=

(14)
(15)

1
2 2

[ ( km ) + c ]
2 2

=tan1
Since

F0 /k

c
( km
)

(16)

st

is static deflection

and

r=/ n

is the frequency

ratio, we obtain:
M=

X
=
st

1
1
2 2

[ ( 1r ) +( 2 r ) ]
2 2

=tan1

2 r
1r 2

( )

(17)
(18)

Here M is magnification factor or amplitude ratio. The variation of

amplitude ratio M and phase angle
shown in Figure 7 and .

of the response with frequency ratio r is

Figure 7 Variation of M with r

Figure 8 Variation of with r

The MATLAB scripts to these variation behaviours is given in Appendix A.

The following are the notable characteristics of these behaviours.

For undamped system

=0 :

as

r 1

Any amount of damping

For any specified value of r a higher value of damping reduces the

value of M.

When r=0 (constant force) the value of

For

>0

M 0

>0

M =1

reduction in M is very significant near resonance

as

0< <

1
2

For

Maximum value of M is given by

the maximum value of M occurs at = 12 2

M=

reduces M for all values of

X
1
=
st 2 1 2

Value of M at = n is given by
M=

X
1
=
st 2

=0 :
=0
0<r <1
For undamped system
for
and

=180 for r >1 . This means that the excitation and response
are in phase for 0<r <1 and out of phase for r >1 .

For >00< r< 1 : phase angle is given by

response lags the excitation.

For <0r >1 : phase angle is given by

response leads the excitation.

0< < 90 , meaning

90 < < 180 , meaning

1.3.1.

Response of the system under harmonic base motion

Figure 9 Single degree of freedom system subjected to harmonic base motion

Consider the system as shown in Figure 9 subjected to harmonic base

motion. The equation of motion is given by:
m x +c ( x y ) +k ( x y )=0
Or m x +c x + kx=kY sin t +cY cos t

(19)
(20)

Or if z = x-y denotes the motion of the mass relative to the base, then
equation (20) can be re-written as:
m z +c z + kz=m 2 Y sin t

(21)

The steady state solution is given by

z (t)=Z sin ( t 1 )
r

Z =Y

1
2 2

[ ( 1r ) +( 2 r ) ]
2 2

1=tan1
The variation of Z/Y and
respectively.

(22)

2 r
( 1r
)
2

(23)
(24)

with r is shown in Figure 10 and Figure 11

Figure 10 Variation of Z/Y with r

Figure 11 Variation of

1.3.2.

1 with r

MATLAB example Vehicle moving on a sinusoidal road

Consider a quarter car vehicle model travelling on a sinusoidal road.

Vehicle mass is 1200 kg, suspension system has spring constant of 400 kN/m
and a damping factor of 0.5. If the vehicle speed is 20 km/hr and the road surface

is sinusoidal with amplitude of 0.05 m and wavelength of 6 m. Plot the vehicle

response using Simulink model.

Figure 12 Quarter car response

The MATLAB script and Simulink file are given in Appendix A.

1.4. Two degree of freedom quarter car example

Consider the two degree of freedom quarter car system as shown in
Figure 13. Plot the sprung mass response using Simulink. The vehicle constants
are: vehicle sprung mass,
constant are
properties are
t=1

k s=86000

ms=550

N/m and

k t =256740

kg, suspension stiffness and damping

c s=800

N/m and

kg/s and tires elastic and damping

c t =100

kg/s. Step input of 0.002 m at

second is given from 0 m at the beginning. The response of the system is

shown in Figure 14 and Figure 15. The MATLAB code and Simulink model to
solve this problem is given in Appendix A.

Figure 13 Quarter car model subjected to step input

Figure 14 Sprung mass response

Figure 15 Sprung mass displacement and tire deflection

As can be observed, that as soon as the vehicle strikes the step the
sprung mass acceleration shoots up to 4 m/s 2 from 0 m/s2 due to the impact and
gradually decays exponentially to zero as time progresses. Since vehicle sprung
mass acceleration is related to the ride comfort of the vehicle it is one of the most
important parameter to study in case of vehicle vibration.

References
Inman, D. (University of M. (2013). Fourth Edition (Fourth). New Jersey: Pearson.
http://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-387000-1.01001-9
Rao, S. S. (2010). Mechanical Vibrations. Prentice Hall (Fourth). New Jersey: Prentice
Hall.