
Force Transmitted to Fixed Surface
We shall now determine the dynamic component of the force transmitted to
the base of a single degree-of-freedom system such as that shown in Fig-
ure 3.1. This force is given by Eq. (3.10); that is,
(4.22)
Upon substituting Eqs. (4.13) and (4.14) into Eq. (4.22), we obtain
(4.23)
At t 0, the reaction force acting on the base is determined from Eq. (4.23)
to be
(4.24)
Thus, when the mass of a single degree-of-freedom system is subjected to an
initial velocity, the force is instantaneously transmitted to the base. This un-
realistic characteristic is a property of modeling the system with a spring and
viscous damper combination in parallel. The viscous damper essentially
“locks” with the sudden application of the velocity and is thereby momentar-
ily rigid. This temporary rigidity shorts the spring and instantaneously trans-
mits the force to the base. Representing a support by a combination of a lin-
ear spring and linear viscous damper in parallel is called the Kelvin-Voigt
model, which is one type of elementary viscoelastic model. A second type of
elementary viscoelastic model, called the Maxwell model, consists of a linear
spring and a linear viscous damper in series, and this model is discussed in
Example 4.7.
State-Space Plot and Energy Dissipation
The values of the displacements and velocities corresponding to these max-
ima and minima can also be visualized in a state-space plot, which is a graph
of the displacement versus the velocity at each instant of time. This graph for
the system considered here is shown in Figure 4.5. As time unfolds, the tra-
jectory initiated from a set of initial conditions is attracted to the equilibrium
position located at the origin (0, 0). When 0, the state-space plot in terms
of the nondimensional displacement and nondimensional velocity is a circle.
If this plot is made in terms of dimensional quantities, it will be an ellipse.
We now show how the energy dissipated by the system in the time interval
0 t t
d,max
can be determined. The system of interest is a spring-mass-
damper system, as shown in Figure 3.2, which is translating back and forth
along the x-axis. The energy dissipated by the system is equal to the difference
between the sum of the kinetic energy and the potential energy in the final state
and the sum of the kinetic energy and the potential energy in the initial state.
Noting that the potential energy in the initial state is zero, and the kinetic en-
ergy in the final state is zero, the energy that is dissipated is the difference be-
tween the initial kinetic energy and the potential energy that is stored in the
F
R
10 2
2zkV
o
v
d
sin1w 2
2zkV
o
v
n
F
R
1t 2
kV
o
e
zv
n
t
v
d
32z sin1v
d
t w2 sin1v
d
t24
F
R
cx
#
kx
138 CHAPTER 4 Single Degree-of-Freedom System