Forced Oscillations
If in addition to the force

which causes Simple Harmonic Motion and the force

which causes damping, the body is acted upon by a force

the equation of Motion now becomes:
This can be re-written as :
where
and
k and
n have the same meaning as before.
To solve this equation let
x=u be a solution of the above equation in which case:
Now substitute
x= u+z in equation (32)
Subtracting equation (
11) from (
12)
Thus
z is the solution for free damped harmonic oscillations which we have already found in the previous paragraph. Therefore the solution of (
10) is obtained by adding together u which is any particular solution and naturally depends upon f(t) and
z which is the general solution for free oscillations. i.e. when there is no applied force f(t). We have already seen that the latter is damped out as t increases and hence the solution approaches
x=u as
t tends towards infinity. For this reason
u is called the
Steady State and the part
z which dies away is called the
transient.
In most cases the applied force is either a constant one or it s periodic of period

. In which case f(t) is of the form

and the steady state can be found by assuming a trial solution

and finding A and B by making the resulting equation identically true, i.e. by making the coefficients of

and

the same on the left hand side of the equation as on the right. This method of finding
A and
B is shown in the following example.