modeling a bouncing mass on a elastic surface (spring surface) using .m file
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I have a problem to create a function using ode45 to plot the movement of bouncing mass on a spring damper system.
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Walter Roberson
on 29 Jan 2012
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/6200-tutorial-how-to-ask-a-question-on-answers-and-get-a-fast-answer
Answers (1)
nick
on 16 Apr 2025
Hello Amr,
As Walter pointed out, kindly share the issue and the code that you tried to help you debug the issue.
To model a general bouncing mass on an elastic surface using a spring-damper system, you can describe the system using a second-order differential equation derived from Newton's second law. The spring-damper system can be characterized by the following equation:

m = 1.0; % Mass (kg)
k = 10.0; % Spring constant (N/m)
c = 0.5; % Damping coefficient (Ns/m)
g = 9.81; % Acceleration due to gravity (m/s^2)
y0 = [0.1; 0]; % Initial displacement (m) and velocity (m/s)
tspan = [0 10]; % Time from 0 to 10 seconds
% Define the function handle for the ODE
bouncingMass = @(t, y) [y(2); (-k/m)*y(1) - (c/m)*y(2) + g];
[t, y] = ode45(bouncingMass, tspan, y0);
figure;
subplot(2, 1, 1);
plot(t, y(:, 1), 'b-');
xlabel('Time (s)');
ylabel('Displacement (m)');
title('Displacement vs. Time');
grid on;
subplot(2, 1, 2);
plot(t, y(:, 2), 'r-');
xlabel('Time (s)');
ylabel('Velocity (m/s)');
title('Velocity vs. Time');
grid on;
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