DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

EXAMPLE SHEET 3

You should attempt all the questions on this sheet but only part of a question in
section A and the questions in section B will be marked for credit, and must be
handed in to your supervisor via the supervisors pigeon loft by 2pm Thursday, week
6.
A1 Remember: Practice makes perfect! Solve the following IVPs
y y 30y = 0, y(0) = 2, y(0)

=1
y 6y + 9y = 0, y(1) = 0, y(1)

=3
y + 12 y +

1
y
16

= 0, y(4) = 4, y(4)

=0

y + 4y + 5y = 0, y(0) = 0, y(0)

=1
y + 2y + 5y = 0, y(0) = 0, y(0)

= 4 write your answer in the form

pt
Ee cos (qt ).

B1 A simple model of the spread of an infection in a population is

H = kIH
I = kIH
where H(t) is the number of healthy people and I(t) the number of infected
people. We shall be studying such sets of equations later in the course, but for
now note that d/dt[H +I] = 0 i.e. the population size is constant so H +I = N
say. Substitute I = N H in order to obtain a single equation for H(t),
dH
= kH(N H).
dt
Determine the stability of the fixed points for this equation, and draw its phase
diagram. Deduce that eventually all the population becomes infected.
NB1 The phase diagram is the graphs with fixed points and arrows on that
we were drawing in section 1.9 Autonomous First Order ODEs.
NB2 More realistic models show that in fact any infection will die out before
the entire population has been infected.
B2 If the roots of the auxiliary equation of a second order linear homogeoneous
ODE are k1 > 0 and k2 < 0 then the solution is
x(t) = Aek1 t + Bek2 t .
For most choices of initial conditions
x(0) = x0 ,

x(0)

= y0

we will have that x(t) as t . However, there are some special

initial conditions for which x(t) 0 as t . Find the relationship between
x0 and y0 that ensures this.
1

B3 When first opened, the Millennium Bridge in London wobbled from side to side
as people crossed; you can see this on video at www.arup.com/MillenniumBridge.
Footfalls created small side-to-side movements of the bridge, which were then
enhanced by the tendency of people to adjust their steps to compensate for
wobbling. With more than a critical number of pedestrians (around 160) the
bridge began to wobble violently.
Without any pedestrians, the displacement x of a representative point on the
bridge away from its normal position would satisfy
M x + k x + x = 0,
where M 4 105 kg, k 5 104 kg/s, 107 kg/s2 .
Show that the level of damping here is only around 1% of the critical value.
The effective forcing from each pedestrian was found by experiment (which involved varying numbers of people walking across the bridge) to be proportional
to x,
with
F 300x.

If there are N pedestrians, the displacement of the bridge satisfies

M x + k x + x = 300N x.

Find the critical number N0 of pedestrians, such that if there are more than
N0 pedestrians the bridge is no longer damped. Show that if there are 200
pedestrians then there will be oscillations with a frequency of approximately
0.8 hertz (oscillations per second) the amplitude (max size) of oscillation of
which grows as et/80 .
The problem was corrected by adding additional damping, in order to bring
the damping up to 20% of the critical level. What would this do to the value of
k, and how many people can now walk across the bridge without counteracting
all the damping?

C1 Not particularly difficult, but this question introduces material that is extra to
the module syllabus and so non-examinable. If initial data for a differential
equation are given at more than one point, the differential equation together
with the data is called a boundary value problem. For example, the differential
equation
y y 2y = 0, y(0) = 0, y(1) = 1
is called a two-point boundary value problem because a solution y(t) of the
differential equation is sought whose graph passes through the two points (0, 0)
and (1, 1). Find y(t) in this example and then find y(t) that solves
y + 2y + y = 0, y(0) = 2, y(2) = 2.