Exact periodic solution of the undamped Helmholtz oscillator subject to a constant force and arbitrary initial conditions

Abstract

The Helmholtz oscillator is a nonlinear mixed‐parity oscillator that models the asymmetric vibrations of many engineering and scientific systems. This paper investigated a general and completely integrable form of the Helmholtz oscillator and derived its exact periodic solution from the first integral of the governing differential equation. The considered Helmholtz oscillator has general linear and nonlinear stiffness constants, is subject to a constant force, and has arbitrary initial conditions. Its exact time period was derived in terms of the complete elliptic integral of the first kind, while the exact displacement was derived in terms of the Jacobi elliptic sine function. The validity of the exact solutions was verified for various combinations of the system parameters and initial conditions by comparing with numerical solutions. The exact solutions and numerical solutions were found to match perfectly. Furthermore, the exact solution was applied to analyze the vibration response of real‐world systems that could be modeled as Helmholtz oscillators. The present exact solutions provide benchmark solutions that could be used to determine the accuracy of new and existing approximate solutions for the Helmholtz oscillator.