Moving Rigid Termination

It is instructive to study the ``waveguide equivalent circuit'' of the simple case of a rigidly terminated ideal string with its left endpoint being moved by an external force, as shown in Fig.6.4. This case is relevant to bowed strings (§9.6) since, during time intervals in which the bow and string are stuck together, the bow provides a termination that divides the string into two largely isolated segments. The bow can therefore be regarded as a moving termination during ``sticking''.

Referring to Fig.6.4, the left termination of the rigidly terminated ideal string is set in motion at time with a constant velocity . From Eq.(6.5), the wave impedance of the ideal string is , where is tension and is mass density. Therefore, the upward force applied by the moving termination is initially . At time , the traveling disturbance reaches a distance from along the string. Note that the string slope at the moving termination is given by , which derives the fact that force waves are minus tension times slope waves. (See §C.7.2 for a fuller discussion.)

---

Subsections

• Digital Waveguide Equivalent Circuits
• Animation of Moving String Termination
• Terminated String Impedance

---

Previous: Force or Pressure Waves at a Rigid Termination
Next: Digital Waveguide Equivalent Circuits

Order a Hardcopy of Physical Audio Signal Processing

---

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.