Force Driving a Spring against a Wall

For this example, we have an external force driving a spring which is terminated on the other end at a rigid wall. Figure F.16 shows the physical diagram and the electrical equivalent circuit is given in Fig.F.17.

Figure F.18 depicts the insertion of an infinitesimal transmission line, and Fig.F.19 shows the result of converting the spring impedance to wave variable form.

The two-port adaptor needed for this problem is the same as that for the force-driven mass, and the final result is shown in Fig.F.20.

Note that the spring model is being driven by a force from a zero source impedance, in contrast with the infinite source impedance interpretation of Fig.F.8b as a compressed spring. In this case, if the driving force goes to zero, the spring force goes immediately to zero (``free termination'') rather than remaining fixed.

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About the Author: Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.