Multiple Degree of Freedom Systems: Eigenvalue Problem
The problem of finding the natural frequencies and mode shapes for a multiple degree of freedom system is essentially an eigenvalue problem, although we have so far not presented it as such. To see this recall that the equations of motion for an MDOF system can be written as
(8.26)
where and
are the mass and stiffness matrices respectively and
is a column vector containing the coordinates. We look for solutions in which all of the coordinates are undergoing simple simultaneous harmonic motion of the form
so that
Substitution these results into the equations of motion gives
or
(8.27)
Pre-multiplying both sides of (8.27) by the inverse of the mass matrix gives
or
(8.28)
which is a standard eigenvalue problem
is known as the
- the natural frequencies (squared)
are the
of
- the mode shapes
are the associated eigenvectors of
The dynamic matrix can be used with standard software packages such as Matlab or Octave.
Alternatively, starting with equation (8.27) and premultiplying both side by gives
or
which is another formulation of the standard eigenvalue problem.