Study of Support Motion of a Finite Bar with a Boundary Damper and a Spring Using Analytical Approaches and FEM

In this paper, we solve the vibration problem of a finite bar with a viscously damped boundary in conjunction with a spring on the same side subject to the support motion on the other side. To avoid the computation of complex modes and the difficulty of orthogonal conditions for the partial differential equation (PDE) of a continuous system, two alternatives are employed. One is the analytical derivation by using the diamond rule of the method of characteristics. The advantage is that this method can yield an analytical solution. However, the disadvantage is that the method can be only applied to some simple problems such as a linear system and the one-dimensional (1D) wave equation. The other numerical method, finite element method (FEM), is incorporated into a general-purpose program to solve this problem. The advantage of the FEM is that this methodology can be applied to solve various problems such as different PDEs. Therefore, the solution obtained by using the FEM is compared with that of the analytical solution. Two special cases, only a spring and a damper alone, are also considered by using the FEM. Interestingly, the same silent area is captured in the displacement profile by using the FEM for the three cases. We also find that the displacement profiles have slope discontinuity which only occurs on the characteristic line. After the wave front arrives at the boundary, various responses appear due to different boundaries, spring, damper and both. It is found that the displacement amplitude of the general case is smaller than the other two special cases. This result matches the application of engineering practice.