MTHSC 982 – Homework 06

Michael Case & Chris Johnson

We are given the three mass, two spring system with masses m1 and m2 and spring
constants k1 , k2 , k3 which we can represent as

m1 y100 = −k1 y1 − b1 y10 + k2 (y2 − y1 ) + F1 (t)

m2 y200 = −k3 y2 − b2 y20 − k2 (y2 − y1 ) + F2 (t)

Or, equivalently,

x01 = x2
k1 + k2 b1 k2 1
x02 = − x1 − x2 + x3 + F1 (t)
m1 m1 m1 m1
x03 = x4
k2 k2 + k3 b2 1
x04 = x1 − x3 − x4 + F2 (t)
m2 m2 m2 m2

Assuming that k1 = 3, k2 = 1, k3 = 2, b1 = 1, b2 = 2, F1 (t) = e−t , F2 (t) = 0, x1 (0) = −1,

x2 (0) = 0, x3 (0) = 1, and x4 (0) = 0, we wish to minimize the difference between the
amount of work done between our masses, m1 and m2 , after ten seconds, assuming that
m1 ∈ {0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5} and m2 = 3 − m1 . We will do this by introducing two functions,
M and N where M (10) will represent the amount of work done on m1 and N (10) will
represent the amount of work done on m2 after ten seconds. That is, we will see which
combination of masses minimizes |M (10) − N (10)|.
To derive M and N we note that force is mass times acceleration and work is force times
distance. That is, for the amount of work, W1 , done on mass m1 we have the following.

W1 = force × distance
= m1 y100 (t)∆y
= m1 y100 (t)y10 (t)∆t

In order to approximate the work done by time t = 10, we calculate the following.

1
 Z 10
M (10) = M 0 (t)dt
Z0 10
= (−(k1 + k2 )x1 − b1 x2 + k2 x3 + F1 (t)) y10 (t)dt
0
Z 10
= m1 y100 (t)y10 (t)dt
0
N
X
= m1 y100 (tj )y10 (tj )∆tj
j=0

N (10) is defined similarly.

We know, from homework 03, that a solution to our original system (x01 through x04 ) is
given by the following.
4
X
x(t) ≈ Cj eaj t (cos(bj t) + i sin(bj t))vj
j=1

Where aj is the real part of eigenvalue λj , bj is the imaginary part of λj , and vj is the
corresponding eigenvector.
For the parameters in our problem we have the following eigenvalues.

m1 λ1,2 λ3,4
0.5 −0.98894 ± i2.66601 −0.41106 ± i0.95885
1.0 −0.5 ± i1.98397 −0.5 ± i1.03144
1.5 −0.38925 ± i1.67107 −0.61075 ± i1.13473
2.0 −0.34270 ± i1.36613 −0.90730 ± i1.39618
2.5 −0.24509 ± i1.21213 −1.95491 ± i1.39013

We can then numerically estimate M (10) and N (10) using the sum presented above.

m1 M (10) N (10) |M (10) − N (10)|

0.5 3137.9 225.99 2911.9
1.0 3916.21 292.68 3623.53
1.5 4041.34 311.14 3730.20
2.0 3953.20 311.86 3641.34
2.5 3793.95 305.51 3488.44

And so we see that we minimize the difference in the amount of work done on the two
masses by taking m1 = 0.5, m2 = 2.5.