Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/iii/paper-83/3/c/solution

Set . The characteristic polynomial is , whose roots have arguments , , , and . Only the last two have negative real part and decay at infinity. Write and ; the admissible roots are
Thus . Since , the boundary equations are and . Therefore
Taking real parts gives the oscillatory bending of a moment-free semi-infinite filament
The first phase is constant along paths with , so that contribution travels left. The second has and travels right. Both are forced, attenuating patterns in an overdamped medium; they are not undamped inertial waves. Their amplitudes are equal at the driven end, but gives decay lengths and . Hence the right-travelling contribution dominates away from the end, because it decays more slowly; its amplitude relative to the left-travelling one grows as .
Figure 1.
Counter-propagating contributions to a driven filament, with faster attenuation of the left-travelling wave
. Details.
The envelopes in the sketch show this amplitude comparison independently of the instantaneous phase. At particular points a cosine can vanish or the two terms can interfere, so dominance refers to envelopes and the far-field response, not to a strict pointwise inequality at every time.

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