Duffing equation
The Duffing equation, named after Georg Duffing, is a non-linear second-order differential equation used to model certain damped and driven oscillators. The equation is given by
where the function is the displacement at time is the first derivative of with respect to time, i.e. velocity, and is the second time-derivative of i.e. acceleration. The numbers and are given constants.
The equation describes the motion of a damped oscillator with a more complex potential than in simple harmonic motion ; in physical terms, it models, for example, an elastic pendulum whose spring's stiffness does not exactly obey Hooke's law.
The Duffing equation is an example of a dynamical system that exhibits chaotic behavior. Moreover, the Duffing system presents in the frequency response the jump resonance phenomenon that is a sort of frequency hysteresis behaviour.
Parameters
The parameters in the above equation are:- controls the amount of damping,
- controls the linear stiffness,
- controls the amount of non-linearity in the restoring force; if the Duffing equation describes a damped and driven simple harmonic oscillator,
- is the amplitude of the periodic driving force; if the system is without a driving force, and
- is the angular frequency of the periodic driving force.
When and the spring is called a hardening spring. Conversely, for it is a softening spring. Consequently, the adjectives hardening and softening are used with respect to the Duffing equation in general, dependent on the values of .
The number of parameters in the Duffing equation can be reduced by two through scaling, e.g. the excursion and time can be scaled as: and assuming is positive. Then:
The dots denote differentiation of with respect to This shows that the solutions to the forced and damped Duffing equation can be described in terms of the three parameters and two initial conditions.
Methods of solution
In general, the Duffing equation does not admit an exact symbolic solution. However, many approximate methods work well:- Expansion in a Fourier series may provide an equation of motion to arbitrary precision.
- The term, also called the Duffing term, can be approximated as small and the system treated as a perturbed simple harmonic oscillator.
- The Frobenius method yields a complex but workable solution.
- Any of the various numeric methods such as Euler's method and Runge-Kutta can be used.
- The homotopy analysis method has also been reported for obtaining approximate solutions of the Duffing equation, also for strong nonlinearity.
Boundedness of the solution for the unforced oscillator
Undamped oscillator
Multiplication of the undamped and unforced Duffing equation, with gives:with H a constant. The value of H is determined by the initial conditions and
The substitution in H shows that the system is Hamiltonian:
When both and are positive, the solution is bounded:
with the Hamiltonian H being positive.
Damped oscillator
Similarly, for the damped oscillator,since for damping. Without forcing the damped Duffing oscillator will end up at its stable equilibrium point. The equilibrium points, stable and unstable, are at If the stable equilibrium is at If and the stable equilibria are at and
Frequency response
The forced Duffing oscillator with cubic nonlinearity is described by the following ordinary differential equation:The frequency response of this oscillator describes the amplitude of steady state response of the equation at a given frequency of excitation For a linear oscillator with the frequency response is also linear. However, for a nonzero cubic coefficient, the frequency response becomes nonlinear. Depending on the type of nonlinearity, the Duffing oscillator can show hardening, softening or mixed hardening–softening frequency response. Anyway, using the homotopy analysis method or harmonic balance, one can derive a frequency response equation in the following form:
For the parameters of the Duffing equation, the above algebraic equation gives the steady state oscillation amplitude at a given excitation frequency.
| Derivation of the frequency response |
| Using the method of harmonic balance, an approximate solution to the Duffing equation is sought of the form: Application in the Duffing equation leads to: Neglecting the superharmonics at the two terms preceding and have to be zero. As a result, Squaring both equations and adding leads to the amplitude frequency response: as stated above. |
Jumps
For certain ranges of the parameters in the Duffing equation, the frequency response may no longer be a single-valued function of forcing frequency For a hardening spring oscillator the frequency response overhangs to the high-frequency side, and to the low-frequency side for the softening spring oscillator. The lower overhanging side is unstable – i.e. the dashed-line parts in the figures of the frequency response – and cannot be realized for a sustained time. Consequently, the jump phenomenon shows up:- when the angular frequency is slowly increased, the response amplitude drops at A suddenly to B,
- if the frequency is slowly decreased, then at C the amplitude jumps up to D, thereafter following the upper branch of the frequency response.