FORCED DAMPED VIBRATIONS –

HARMONIC EXCITATION
By:
Nur Amalina Musa, PhD
• Forced vibration of a SDOF system occur when work is being done on
the system while the vibrations occur.

• Example:
• Ground motion during earthquake, the motion caused by unbalanced
reciprocating machinery or the ground motion imparted to a vehicle as its
wheel traverses the road contour
• Harmonic excitation refers to a sinusoidal external force of a single
frequency applied to the system
• Harmonic excitation are very common source of external force
applied to machines and structures
• Rotating machines such as fans, electric motors and reciprocating
engines transmit a sinusoidally varying force to adjacent components.
• A response of a SDOF system to a harmonic input forms the
foundation of vibration measurement, the design of devices intended
to protect machines from unwanted oscillation, and the design of
transducers used in measuring vibration.
Harmonic Excitation of Undamped Systems
• Consider the system as in Figure 1 for the case of negligible damping
(c=0).
• There are several ways to model the harmonic nature of applied
force, F(t).
• A harmonic function can be represented as a sine, a cosine or as a
complex exponential.

Figure 1a: Schematic of a

SDOF system acted on by
an external force, F(t) and
sliding on a friction-free-
surface.
• The sum of forces in the y-direction yields N=mg with the result of no
motion in that direction. Meanwhile summation force in x-direction
for the undamped case yields the result that the displacement x(t)
must satisfy

• Harmonic driving force is represented by cosine function. This

expression is a linear equation in the variable x(t).
• For convenient, divide this expression by the mass, m. Yield:

• A variety of techniques can be used to solve this equation which are

commonly studied in differential equations.
2nd term 3rd term
Example of Response of an undamped system
EXERCISE

This plot of the time response can be

generate by using MATLAB.

This plot illustrate the effect of both

initial conditions and the forcing
function on the response.
Types of total response of an undamped
system to a harmonic excitation
• Resonance

• Beating
EXERCISE