eguruchela

Forced oscillations and resonance

If an oscillator is displaced and then released it will begin to vibrate. If no more external forces are applied to the system it is a free oscillator. If a force is continually or repeatedly applied to keep the oscillation going, it is aforced oscillator.

Let us consider to the example of a mass on a spring. We now examine the case of forced oscillations, which we did not yet handle. That is, we consider the equation

pic1

for some nonzero F(t)F(t). The setup is again: mm is mass, cc is friction, kk is the spring constant, and F(t)F(t) is an external force acting on the mass.

pic11