Results in Physics 54 (2023) 107090

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An improved one-step amplitude–frequency relation for nonlinear oscillators

Konstantinos Tsaltas
University of Cyprus, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Nicosia, CY-2109, Cyprus

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: This paper proposes an amplitude–frequency relation which improves He’s simple, one-step, approach for
Frequency formulation approximating the frequency in the case of the cubic–quintic Duffing oscillator; the relation we apply is a
Duffing oscillator weighted average amplitude–frequency relation.
Nonlinear conservative oscillator

A very simple amplitude–frequency relation has been proposed Table 1

by [1], which provides a way to approximate the frequency of the Approximating the frequency vie Eq. (4).
cubic–quintic Duffing oscillator A w exact w approximate Relative error (%)

𝑑2𝑥 0.1 1.00377 1.0036571 0.011252

+ 𝑥 + 𝑥3 + 𝑥5 = 0, (1) 0.3 1.03554 1.0342759 0.12207
𝑑𝑡2
0.5 1.10654 1.1021259 0.39891
with 𝑥(0) = 𝐴 and 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑡
(0) = 0, where 𝐴 is the amplitude of the oscillator. 1 1.52359 1.5008006 1.4958
In the following, by 𝑓 (𝑥) we denote the restoring force of the oscillator; 3 7.26863 7.0756335 2.6552
5 19.1815 18.634684 2.8507
here, 𝑓 (𝑥) = 𝑥 + 𝑥3 + 𝑥5 .
8 48.2946 46.878140 2.9330
In particular, He uses the equations 10 75.1774 72.957340 2.9531
√
𝑑𝑓 ( 𝐴 )
20 299.223 290.30394 2.9807
𝑤= (2) 50 1867.57 1811.7559 2.9886
𝑑𝑥 2 70 3659.98 3550.5593 2.9897
100 7468.83 7245.5166 2.9899
and
√ 300 67215.57 65205.632 2.9903
( ) ( 𝑑𝑓 𝑑𝑓 ( 𝐴 ) 𝑑𝑓
) 500 186709.04 181125.86 2.9903
1
𝑤= (0.3𝐴) + + (0.7𝐴) (3) 700 365949.25 355006.21 2.9903
3 𝑑𝑥 𝑑𝑥 2 𝑑𝑥 1000 746834.69 724501.95 2.9903
for an approximation of the frequency of the oscillation 𝑤.
More general relations appear in [2], where an average on different
location points is considered, as in Eq. (3). We formulate a weighted
average relation, instead of a simple average relation, and after testing
various weights on 𝑑𝑓𝑑𝑥
located on 𝐴∕8, 𝐴∕2, and 7𝐴∕8, we derive the In the following graph (Fig. 1), we see the relative error (%) for
following equations: the frequency of the cubic–quintic Duffing oscillator for 𝐴 ≤ 20, when
√ approximated by Eq. (5).
𝑑𝑓 ( 𝐴 ) 𝑑𝑓 ( 4𝐴 ) 𝑑𝑓 ( 7𝐴 )
𝑤 = 0.285 + 0.6 + 0.115 (4) Eqs. (4) and (5) can also be tested on other cases where the restoring
𝑑𝑥 8 𝑑𝑥 8 𝑑𝑥 8
force of the oscillator is of polynomial type. For instance, when the
or
√ oscillator is described by
𝑑𝑓 ( 𝐴 ) 𝑑𝑓 ( 4𝐴 ) 𝑑𝑓 ( 7𝐴 )
𝑤 = 0.275 + 0.6 + 0.125 (5) 𝑑2𝑥
𝑑𝑥 8 𝑑𝑥 8 𝑑𝑥 8 + 𝑥 + 𝑥3 = 0 (6)
𝑑𝑡2
We see that the relative error of the approximation is reduced when
one uses one of the weighed average equations above. with 𝑥(0) = 𝐴 and 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑡
(0) = 0, where for 0 < 𝐴 ≤ 1000 the relative error
The following tables include the exact frequency (see Table 1 (%) is less than 0.8 when the frequency is approximated by Eq. (4); in
in [1]), the frequency approximated by Eqs. (4) and (5), and the relative Fig. 2 we see the relative error (%) for 𝐴 ≤ 20 in this case.
error respectively (see Tables 1 and 2).

E-mail address: tsaltas.konstantinos@ucy.ac.cy.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rinp.2023.107090
Received 26 August 2023; Received in revised form 29 September 2023; Accepted 14 October 2023
Available online 17 October 2023
2211-3797/© 2023 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
K. Tsaltas Results in Physics 54 (2023) 107090

Table 2
Approximating the frequency vie Eq. (5).
A w exact w approximate Relative error (%)
0.1 1.00377 1.0037706 0.000059899
0.3 1.03554 1.0353690 0.016511
0.5 1.10654 1.1055033 0.093692
1 1.52359 1.5179589 0.36959
3 7.26863 7.2553523 0.18267
5 19.1815 19.134380 0.24565
8 48.2946 48.155997 0.28700
10 75.1774 74.953267 0.29814
20 299.223 298.28321 0.31408
50 1867.57 1861.6179 0.31871
70 3659.98 3648.2872 0.31948
100 7468.83 7444.9596 0.31960
300 67215.57 67000.606 0.31981
500 186709.04 186111.90 0.31982
700 365949.25 364778.84 0.31983
1000 746834.69 744446.08 0.31983
Fig. 3. Relative error (%) for frequency of oscillator (7) via Eq. (5).

Other methods, such as the harmonic balance method, can be

Fig. 1. Relative error (%) for frequency of oscillator (1) via Eq. (5).
applied in order to approximate the frequency with great success.
For example, [3] have applied the harmonic balance method on the
cubic–quintic Duffing oscillator obtaining a very good approximation,
especially by the third order approximation with truncation principle.
The approximation via Eq. (5) presented in this paper is better in the
case of the second order harmonic balance approximation and close to
the approximation achieved via the third order approximation of the
harmonic balance method, without the use of the truncation principle
(see Table 1, [3]). Nevertheless, one issue is that these methods often
become complicated, requiring the computation of many parameters,
when applied on higher degree restoring force polynomials.
In conclusion, in the case of the Duffing oscillator, as well as in
other cases of oscillators of polynomial restoring force with odd degree
nonlinearities, the error remains relatively small with the weighted av-
erage amplitude–frequency relations (4) and (5) proposed in this paper.
Thus, we provide a fast and simple way to approximate the frequency in
practical situations in a wider range of nonlinear oscillators. In future
work, we intent to place the proposed equations in a more concrete
theoretical framework.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Konstantinos Tsaltas: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing –

original draft, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-

cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Fig. 2. Relative error (%) for frequency of oscillator (6) via Eq. (4).
Data availability

No data was used for the research described in the article.

For, higher degree polynomial restoring force the relative error
remains small. For example, when the oscillator is described by
References
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frequency, the error for the above nonlinear oscillators is relatively
large when the amplitude is large.