Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/paper-2/7/d/solution

The pinned third bar has zero displacement, so remove its row and column from the stiffness matrix while retaining the springs that connect the moving bars to it. The remaining unit-mass system has
Its eigenvectors and have eigenvalues and . Hence
For these are and . The fixed value changes the static offsets and reaction force but not this linearized matrix.

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