Mass Termination Model
The previous discussion solved for the motion of an ideal mass striking an ideal string of infinite length. We now investigate the same model from the string's point of view. As before, we will be interested in a digital waveguide (sampled traveling-wave) model of the string, for efficiency's sake (Chapter 6), and we therefore will need to know what the mass ``looks like'' at the end of each string segment. For this we will find that the impedance description (§7.1) is especially convenient.
Let's number the string segments to the left and right of the mass by 1 and 2, respectively, as shown in Fig.9.15. Then Eq.(9.8) above may be written
where denotes the force applied by string-segment 1 to the mass (defined as positive in the ``up'', or positive- direction), is the force applied by string-segment 2 to the mass (again positive upwards), and denotes the inertial force applied by the mass to both string endpoints (where again, a positive force points up).
To derive the traveling-wave relations in a digital waveguide model, we want to use the force-wave variables and that we defined for vibrating strings in §6.1.5; i.e., we defined , where is the string tension and is the string slope, .
As shown in Fig.9.16, a negative string slope pulls ``up'' to the right. Therefore, at the mass point we have , where denotes the position of the mass along the string. On the other hand, the figure also shows that a negative string slope pulls ``down'' to the left, so that . In summary, relating the forces we have defined for the mass-string junction to the force-wave variables in the string, we have
where denotes the position of the mass along the string.
Thus, we can rewrite Eq.(9.11) in terms of string wave variables as
or, substituting the definitions of these forces,
The inertial force of the mass is because the mass must be accelerated downward in order to produce an upward reaction force. The signs of the two string forces follow from the definition of force-wave variables on the string, as discussed above.
The force relations can be checked individually. For string 1,
Now that we have expressed the string forces in terms of string force-wave variables, we can derive digital waveguide models by performing the traveling-wave decompositions and and using the Ohm's law relations and for (introduced above near Eq.(6.6)).
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Mass Reflectance from Either String
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Matrix Bridge Impedance