th

5 International Congress on
Computational Mechanics and Simulation,
10-13 December 2014, India

APPLICATION OF THE PSEUDOSPECTRAL METHOD TO

THE LONGITUDINAL VIBRATIONS OF NON-UNIFORM
RODS
P.SRI HARIKRISHNA1 , G.SUDHEER2 and R.Y.VASUDEVA3
1

Department of Applied Mathematics, GITAM University, Visakhapatnam, India.

E-mail: harikrishna.ps@gmail.com
2
Department of Mathematics, GVP College of Engineering for Women, Visakhapatnam, India.
E-mail: g_sudheer@hotmail.com
3
School of Basic Sciences, IIT Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India
E-mail: ryvasudeva@iitbbs.ac.in
ABSTRACT
Rods with variable area cross-sections are structural components in many engineering structures.
A study of the vibration characteristics in these structures is of great importance in designing the
structures and in monitoring their performance as well. We present an application of a numerical
method - the Pseudospectral (PS) method - to study the vibrations of an elastic rod of non uniform
cross section material citing literature that shows recent interest in this area of study. One of the
main advantages of the PS method is in its simplicity and ease of computation. The natural
frequencies of the rod under varying end conditions are calculated. Results show good agreement
with previous available analytical solutions. This work demonstrates the efficacy of the PS method
in obtaining numerical solutions that are as good as exact solutions in practically used frequency
ranges in the case of vibration problems of structural elements.
Keywords: longitudinal; vibration; non-uniform; rods; pseudospectral method.

Introduction
The longitudinal vibration of rods is a subject of considerable scientific and practical interest that
has been studied extensively [Kumar and Sujith (1997)]. In [Eisenberger(1991)], the exact
longitudinal natural frequencies of a variable cross-section rod with polynomial variation in the
cross-sectional area and mass distribution along the member is obtained. The results show that
natural frequencies are only slightly affected by taper. This study evoked interest in the study of
vibration of non-uniform rods and beams. In [Abrate (1995)] it was shown that there is a class of
non-uniform rods and beams for which the equations of motion can be transformed into the
equations of motion for a uniform rod or beam. It is further shown that when both ends of the rod
are fixed the natural frequencies of such non-uniform rods are equal to that of a uniform rod and for
fixed-free, free-free ends the natural frequencies are determined by solving a simple transcendental
equation. The exact solutions for the longitudinal vibration of non-uniform rods is presented in
[Kumar & Sujith (1997)]. The frequencies of non-uniform rods for different end conditions are
calculated and their dependence on taper is also discussed. A family of exact solutions for the

5th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation

longitudinal vibrations of variable area rods was presented by [Anil Raj & Sujith (2005)]. The
eigenfrequencies of rods with certain area variations subjected to classical boundary conditions
were obtained. The longitudinal natural vibration frequencies of rods with variable cross sections
are obtained in [Yardimoglu & Aydin (2011)] from the exact solutions of differential equations of
motion based on transformation method. The effects of cross sectional area variation of rods on
natural characteristics are studied with numerical examples. A differential quadrature method was
used in [Al-kaisy et.al.(2007)] to obtain the vibration characteristics of non-uniform elements such
as beams and rods. The differential quadrature method was found to give an approximate solution
that is in good agreement with exact solution.
The present paper is aimed at investigating the performance of a spectral collocation method in
studying the vibration characteristics of rods. The spectral methods arise from the fundamental
problem of approximation of function by interpolation on an interval, and are very much successful
for the numerical solution of ordinary or partial differential equation.
Among spectral methods, the pseudospectral approach is especially attractive, owing to the ease
with which it can be applied to variable coefficient problems and non linear problems. In the
pesudospectral method, the unknown solution to the differential equation is expanded as global
interpolant such as a trigonometric or polynomial interpolant [Weidmann & Reddy (2000)]. The
method requires that the governing equation (differential equation) is satisfied in the nodes of a
certain grid and the boundary conditions are enforced explicitly. There are different approaches
used in the implementation of the Pseudospectral (PS) method. Of them, the differentiation
matrices approach [Trefthen (2000), Weidmann & Reddy (2000)] is widely used. The straight
forward implementation of the PS method utilizing thte trigonometric form of Chebyshev
polynomials is used in the present paper. A straight forward implementation is generally found to
enhance the accuracy of the solution [Lee 2003].

The Pseudospectral Method

Finite differences and finite element methods have long histories as particularly flexible and
powerful general purpose numerical solution methods in solving ordinary/partial differential
equations that arise in different areas of Science and Engineering. In recent years, spectral and in
particular pseudospectral methods have emerged as intriguing alternatives in many situations
[Fornberg (1996)] . A brief review of the pseudospectral method is outlined below:
Consider the equation L u (x ) = f ( x )
(1)
Where L is the operator of the differential or integral equation, x [ 1,1 ] and u ( 1) = a , u (1) = b.
The basic idea in a spectral method is to assume that u (x ) can be approximated by a sum of N + 1
N

basis functions n (x ). i.e. u ( x ) u N (x ) = a n n (x ) . The residual function is given by

n=0

R (x , a 0 , a1 , K a N ) = Lu N f . The idea is to choose the series coefficients {a n } so that the residual

function is minimized. The different spectral and Pseudospectral methods differ mainly in their
minimization strategies [Boyd (2000)]. In a collocation method, we may select N 1 points

{x1 , K , xN 1} in ( 1,1 ) and

(N 1) points in addition to

require u N (x ) to satisfy the differential equation (1) at these

satisfying the boundary conditions. This transforms the differential

equation into an analogous set of algebraic equations in terms of the discrete values of the function

5th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation

u (x ) at prespecified discrete points of the solution domain. The best choice of n (x ) are the eigen
functions of a singular Sturm-Lioville problem such as the Legendre or Chebyshev orthogonal
polynomials. We consider Chebyshev polynomials of first kind Tn ( x ) to be the basis functions. i.e.,
N

u N ( x ) = a k Tk (x ) i.e this polynomial is approximated by N + 1 Chebyshev coefficients. Suppose

k =0

we represent it by its two values at the boundary points x0 and x N and also at (N 1) internal
collocation points

{x1 ,K, xN 1}

then it yields a pseudospectral method representation of the

polynomial. By definition of Chebyshev polynomial Tk ( x ) = cos( k cos 1 ( x )) . Letting = cos 1 x ,

we have Tk ( x ) = cos( k cos 1 x ) i.e., we are operating in the domain [ 0 , ] . The collocation points
can be chosen to be the zeros of the Chebyshev polynomial or the turning points of Chebyshev
polynomial. In the present work, we choose the collocation points to be the turning points of
(N i )
Chebyshev polynomial ( T N ( x )) of order N . i.e. x i = cos
, i = 1, 2 ,K , N 1
N

Application to vibration of a rod

The governing differential equation for the free longitudinal vibration of finite isotropic variable

u
2u

E A(l ) l = A(l ) t 2 on l1 < l < l2 , t 0

The classical boundary conditions are : Fixed Fixed bar:

u ( l1 , t ) = u ( l2 , t ) = 0 ;
area rod is given as [Anil Raj & Sujith 2005]

u ( l1 , t ) u ( l 2 , t )
u ( l2 , t )
= 0 and Free Free bar:
=
= 0.
l
l
l
Here u ( l , t ) represents the longitudinal displacement of a rod section at a time constant t , A (l )
Fixed Free bar: u ( l1 , t ) =

the cross sectional area of rod, E the Youngs modulus of material, the density of material rod
and l1 and l 2 are the end positions of rod. Assuming the displacement function to be varying
harmonically with time i.e., u ( l , t ) = W (l ) e it
We have

d 2W 1 dA dW
+
+ 2W = 0

dl 2 A dl dl

(2)

Where W (l ) represents the mode shape and =

where is the angular frequency. The cross

sectional area A (l ) is chosen a specific form and then denoting

1 dA
= B (l ) , equation is
A dl

d 2W
dW
+ B (l )
= 2W . The interpolation points are transformed from [ l1 , l2 ] to [ 1,1 ] using
2
dl
dl
the transformation

l=

hx + l1 + l 2
where h = l2 l1 , l [ l1 , l2 ] ; x [ 1,1 ]
2

5th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation

m

2
Dl(m ) = Dx(m ) where the subscript denotes the differentiation variable and superscript in
h
bracket denotes the order of differentiation. The operator L =

d2
d
+ B is denoted by the matrix
2
dl
dl

L = D (2 ) + BD (1) and equation (2) then reduces to LW = 2W , a matrix eigenvalue equation that
is easily solved using a standard eigensolver.

Results and Discussion

Choice of sampling grid points
The accuracy, stability and rate of convergence of the numerical solutions depend on the choices of
the sampling grid points and it has been suggested that non-uniformly spaced sampling grid points
could give better results [Fung (2002)]. In Pseudospectral methods, generally either the zeros of the
Chebyshev polynomial or the extrema of the Chebyshev polynomials are used as sampling grid
points. We examine the accuracy of the proposed method with respect to the two sampling points
to have an idea of the features of the points mentioned in literature. The grid points (GP) excluding
the end points are
(2i 1)
i = 1 , 2 , K , N 1
GP1: The zeros of T N 1 (x ) : x i = cos
2( N 1)

( N i )
GP2: The extrema of T N ( x ) : x i = cos
i = 1 , 2 , K , N 1
N

The eigenvalues of the longitudinal vibration of a uniform rod are calculated using the two sets of
grid points (GP1 and GP2) for the fixed-fixed and fixed-free cases to investigate the accuracy of
the PS method.
A rod of unit length (L = 1) with material parameters E , and cross-sectional area ( A) equal to

unity is fixed at x = 0. Two alternatives were examined with respect to the other end and they are
(1) fixed and (2) free to move axially. This is to say that equation (2) is solved taking A = 1 and the
two boundary conditions fixed-fixed and fixed-free. The exact natural frequencies ( i ) in the case
of fixed-fixed bar is given by [ Provatidis (2008)]

i =

i
L

, i = 1, 2 , K

The eigen values i2 in this case becomes..

i2 =

i2 2
, i = 1, 2 , K
L2

In the case of fixed-free bar, the corresponding eigen values i2 become

i2 =

(2i 1)2 2
4 L2

, i =1, 2 ,K

5th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation

The relative errors for the first eight modes calculated using the PS method for N = 16 , 20 and 24
for the two sets of grid points are given in Table1. It is observed from the tables that the relative
errors in using the PS method utilizing both the sets GP1 and GP2 are more or less the same.
Further, it is noted in [ Brutman (1984), Belforte et.al (2000)] that the set of points given by the
extrema of Chebyshev polynomials is of considerable interest and has been considered in the
present paper for implementing the PS method.

Table1. Relative error for a uniform rod using the two sets of grid points
GP1
Boundary conditions

Fixed-Fixed

Fixed-Free

Modes

N=16

GP2

N=20

N=24

N=16

N=20

N=24

7.664e-19

9.582e-25

5.462e-31

1.522e-18

2.544e-24

2.163e-30

4.233e-13

1.115e-17

1.521e-22

8.708e-13

3.022e-17

5.124e-22

7.200e-11

7.771e-15

4.539e-19

1.463e-10

2.099e-14

1.525e-18

1.756e-08

7.627e-12

1.808e-15

3.398e-08

2.124e-11

6.198e-15

2.626e-07

2.046e-10

1.045e-13

5.143e-07

5.915e-10

3.591e-13

3.538e-05

9.204e-09

1.687e-11

1.353e-05

3.570e-08

5.978e-11

9.121e-04

4.251e-07

2.591e-10

1.280e-04

2.960e-07

8.739e-10

1.021e-02

1.729e-05

9.643e-09

2.410e-03

1.885e-06

2.637e-08

3.738e-21

5.998e-28

2.635e-31

2.598e-20

5.375e-27

3.768e-31

5.732e-14

7.413e-19

4.584e-24

4.108e-13

6.772e-18

5.095e-23

7.317e-11

8.038e-15

4.096e-19

4.951e-10

7.097e-14

4.451e-18

1.415e-08

5.838e-12

1.119e-15

1.058e-07

5.480e-11

1.267e-14

2.028e-07

2.885e-10

1.759e-13

1.298e-06

2.504e-09

1.896e-12

6.711e-06

1.889e-08

2.436e-11

5.092e-05

1.841e-07

2.832e-10

1.209e-06

1.020e-07

3.552e-10

4.483e-05

8.622e-07

3.776e-09

1.966e-04

2.914e-06

1.589e-08

1.962e-03

3.120e-05

1.917e-07

Convergence analysis using Uniform rods

To further study the convergence behavior of the PS method, the determination of the eigenvalues
of uniform rods is carried out and compared with that of the exact values.
The calculated eigenvalues using the PS method for the fixed-fixed case of a homogeneous rod are
given in Table 2. The values are tabulated for N = 12 , 14 , 16 , 18 and 20 . It is observed that
accuracy in the six digits is obtained for N = 20 i.e. 21 collocation points for the fixed-fixed case.
The relative error for N = 20 is given in the last column of the table. In a similar manner, the
calculated eigenvalues using the PS method for the fixed-free case is given in Table 3 for
N = 12 , 14 , 16 and 20 . In this case too, good accuracy is obtained in six digits for N = 20 . The
results presented in Table 2 and 3 bring out the convergence behavior of the PS method in the case
of uniform rods. The relative error for N = 20 is presented in the last column of the tables reflect
the accuracy of the method.

5th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation

Rods with sinusoidal variation of cross-section area

The longitudinal vibration of fixed-fixed and fixed-free and free-free non-uniform rods with
sinusoidal variation of cross-section of the form A(x ) = A0 sin 2 (ax + b ) is analyzed in this section
by computing the non-dimensional frequencies using the PS method. The length of the rod
described by L = l 2 l1 , is set as the unit value by taking l 0 = 0 , l1 = 1 .The numerical values of the
non-dimensional natural frequencies, given by L = L

, computed using the PS method are

E
compared with the values given in [ Kumar & Sujith (1997), Yardomoglu (2011)]. The nondimensional exact natural frequencies presented in [ Kumar & Sujith (1997)] have some numerical
errors [Yardimoglu (2011)].

Table 2. The calculated eigenvalues of fixed-fixed uniform rod for varying N

Modes

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Exact

N=12

N=14

N=16

N=18

N=20

9.869604
39.478417
88.826439
157.913670
246.740110
355.305758

9.869604
39.478418
88.826477
157.911703
246.575317
358.443342

9.869604
39.478417
88.826438
157.913828
246.740899
355.373094

9.869604
39.478417
88.826439
157.913665
246.739983
355.310568

9.869604
39.478417
88.826439
157.913670
246.740114
355.305545

9.869604
39.478417
88.826439
157.913670
246.740109
355.305771

Relative
Error
1.0e007 *
0.4053
0.1520
0.0675
0.0253
0.0081
0.3687

Table 3. The calculated eigenvalues of fixed-free uniform rod for varying N

Modes

Exact

N=12

N=14

N=16

N=18

N=20

Relative
Error
1.0e006 *

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

2.467401
22.206609
61.685027
120.902653
199.859489
298.555533

2.467401
22.206609
61.685100
120.911556
199.828590
297.148832

2.467401
22.206609
61.685025
120.902263
199.863138
298.725571

2.467401
22.206609
61.685027
120.902666
199.859229
298.540329

2.467401
2.206609
61.685027
120.902653
199.859502
298.556564

2.467401
22.206609
61.685027
120.902653
199.859488
298.555478

0.0405
0.0405
0.0081
0.0074
0.0020
0.1839

The non-dimensional natural frequencies of fixed-fixed rods with a taking the values 1, 2 and

b taking the value 1 is presented in Table 4. The corresponding eigenvalues for the fixed-free case

5th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation

for a =1, 2 and b = 1 with N = 29 is presented in Table 5. It is observed that the frequency values
obtained using the PS method are almost identical to the numerical values given by exact solutions.
The non-dimensional natural frequencies of free-free rods for the same cross section with the same
parameter values as in the other two cases in given Table 6. The results presented in Tables 4, 5 and
6 for sinusoidal area cross section brings out the accuracy of the PS method.

Table 4. Non-dimensional natural frequencies of fixed-fixed rods with A(x ) = A0 sin 2 (ax + b )
a
0
Mode

Kumar &

1
2
3
4
5
6

Sujtih (1997)
3.141593
6.283185
9.424778
12.566371
15.707963
18.849556

1
PS method

Kumar &

3.1415926
6.2831853
9.4247779
12.5663706
15.7079632
18.8495559

Sujtih (1997)
2.978189
6.203097
9.371576
12.526519
15.676100
18.823011

2
PS method

Kumar &

PS method

2.9781881
6.2030974
9.3715761
12.5265186
15.6760999
18.8230114

Sujtih (1997)
2.422727
5.956376
9.210127
12.406195
15.580119
18.743152

2.4227266
5.9563762
9.2101269
12.4061948
15.5801190
18.7431522

Table 5. Non-dimensional natural frequencies of fixed-free rods with A(x ) = A0 sin 2 (ax + b )
a
0

Mode

Kumar &

PS method

Kumar &

PS method

Kumar &

PS method

1
2
3
4
5
6

Sujtih (1997)
1.570796
4.712389
7.853982
10.995574
14.137167
17.278760

1.5707963
4.7123889
7.8539816
10.9955742
14.1371669
17.2787595

Sujtih (1997)
1.517638
4.702145
7.848311
10.991620
14.134120
17.276280

1.5176373
4.7021448
7.8483109
10.9916207
14.1341233
17.2762824

Sujtih (1997)
2.148560
5.535762
8.632812
11.694640
14.757860
17.830600

2.1485596
5.5357623
8.6328112
11.6946412
14.7578582
17.8305968

5th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation

Table 6. Non-dimensional natural frequencies of free-free rods with A(x ) = A0 sin 2 (ax + b )
a
0
Mode

Kumar &

1
2
3
4
5
6

Sujtih (1997)
3.141593
6.283185
9.424778
12.566371
15.707963
18.849556

1
PS method

Kumar &

3.1415926
6.2831853
9.4247779
12.5663706
15.7079632
18.8495559

Sujtih (1997)
3.309070
6.375209
9.487363
12.613648
15.745913
18.881240

2
PS method

Kumar &

PS method

3.3090698
6.3752084
9.4873625
12.6136484
15.7459134
18.8812395

Sujtih (1997)
4.209604
7.259860
10.283498
13.317980
16.368917
19.435335

4.2096042
7.2598601
10.2834986
13.3179805
16.3689177
19.4353365

Conclusion
A novel straight forward implementation of the PS method is presented in the paper. A
convergence analysis of the method is carried out for the case of a uniform rod together with an
analysis of the sampling grid points generally considered for Chebyshev collocation methods. The
method is finally applied to obtain the non-dimensional frequencies of a non-uniform rod with
sinusoidal variation of cross section. The results bring out the efficiency and simplicity of the
proposed method.

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5th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation

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