On the Damped Harmonic Oscillator with Time Dependent Damping Coefficient

Conditions guaranteeing asymptotic stability for the differential equation

$$\begin{aligned} x''+h(t)x'+\omega ^2x=0 \qquad (x\in \mathbb {R}) \end{aligned}$$

are studied, where the damping coefficient \(h:[0,\infty )\rightarrow [0,\infty )\) is a locally integrable function, and the frequency \(\omega >0\) is constant. Our conditions need neither the requirement \(h(t)\le \overline{h}<\infty \) (\(t\in [0,\infty )\); \(\overline{h}\) is constant) (“small damping”), nor \(0< \underline{h}\le h(t)\) (\(t\in [0,\infty )\); \(\underline{h}\) is constant) (“large damping”); in other words, they can be applied to the general case \(0\le h(t)<\infty \) (\(t\in [0,\infty \))). We establish a condition which combines weak integral positivity with Smith’s growth condition

$$\begin{aligned} \int ^\infty _0 \exp [-H(t)]\int _0^t \exp [H(s)]\,\mathrm{{d}}s\,\mathrm{{d}}t=\infty \qquad \left( H(t):=\int _0^t h(\tau )\,\mathrm{{d}}\tau \right) , \end{aligned}$$

so it is able to control both the small and the large values of the damping coefficient simultaneously.

     

Secondary thermocapillary motions of soliton type

An exact analytic solution is obtained for the problem of the stability of the axisymmetric thermocapillary motion due to a point heat source of constant power located on the horizontal free surface of a viscous fluid. Analytic expressions are found for monotonic neutral disturbances of hydrodynamic and thermal type. The critical values of the dimensionless source power for disturbances with arbitrary quantum numbersl andm are determined, together with the secondary motions near the stability threshold. An exact solution of the problem of the axisymmetric thermocapillary motion due to a spherical heat source is presented and its stability is investigated. It is shown that it is always possible to select physical heater properties such that for arbitrarily small source power, the axisymmetric motion is unstable relative to the vortex motion. A comparison is made with experiment.Translated from Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No.4, pp. 20–27, July–August, 1992.