Two coupled pendula

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Two coupled pendula

The equation of motion for a single pendulum subjected to gravity, without taking friction into
account is:

For two pendula coupled by a spring a coupling term is added to the equation of motion of each
pendulum. The force acting on the spring is equal to

, where

, is the

deviation from the spring equilibrium length. The rotational force is thus

With this added term the equations of motion for the two coupled pendula become:

These equations cannot be solved analytically.

For small angles and the harmonic approximation can be used:
equations of motion become:

and

These two equations can be decoupled by adding and subtracting the two equations to give:

With solutions:

. The

and
,
,
and
are determined by the initial conditions. Note that
is the frequency for the single harmonic oscillator.
In physical terms

and

, where

are the frequencies with which the pendula move either in phase, (

) or out of phase (

), as illustrated below.

Out of fase motion

In fase motion
The two modes can be combined to give the solution for

and

In general, the two coupled pendula behave in a complex fashion. A classical example, is found for
the initial angles

and

and setting all initial velocities to zero, as illustrated below.

One pendulum at rest, the other at an angle R

f
The four equations for the initial conditions at
are:

The solutions are

and

. The equations of motion become:

Using trigonometric identities for the sum and difference of cosine functions, this can be rewritten to
give:
(2)

The solutions are plotted below:

One pendulum at rest, the other at an angle R=30 degrees

Equations (2)) show that the motion of

and

is constructed out of a multiplication of 2 sines or

cosines with different angular frequency (

and

The oscillation with long period

smaller period
In the weak coupling limit:

At
comes to rest at

Go back home

).

constitutes an envelope for the oscillation with

, so called beats.

the first pendulum comes to rest whereas the second

.
Authors: Bastiaan Huisman & Annalisa Fasolino
Date: april 20 2001
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Association. Copyright
1999 - 2002.