Solving Mass Spring System with Horizontal Force Applied

Billybobbean
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Hello PF users! This is my first post here, I'm looking for a bit of help with my mechanics assignment.

1. The question is asking me to investigate a mass with a spring and dampner attaching it to a vertical wall, and then it having a horizontal force applied to it.
The mass is 0.1kg
The springs stiffness is 0.6N/m
and there is a dampner with a damping constant of 0.5 Ns/m
At time=0 the mass is in its stationary equilibirum position when it has a force of 0.1sin(t) N applied to it (away from the wall, i.e. the spring will stretch)


2. I am then asked to find the second order differential equation that governs the subsequent motion, which is what I'm stuck on. When I say stuck on I mean don't really know where to start.

3. Sorry, I got nothing :frown:

Any help/pointers/explanations you can give would be helpful, at the moment I am completely stumped.
 
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Billybobbean said:
2. I am then asked to find the second order differential equation that governs the subsequent motion, which is what I'm stuck on. When I say stuck on I mean don't really know where to start.
Can you write out the equation of motion without the damping term? (hint: acceleration is the second derivative of position with respect to time). That is a second order differential equation. Then add the damping term.

AM
 
cant make the forum code work ill draw it when i get home.
 
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To solve this, I first used the units to work out that a= m* a/m, i.e. t=z/λ. This would allow you to determine the time duration within an interval section by section and then add this to the previous ones to obtain the age of the respective layer. However, this would require a constant thickness per year for each interval. However, since this is most likely not the case, my next consideration was that the age must be the integral of a 1/λ(z) function, which I cannot model.
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