Integration of Dynamic Equation of Spring-Mass-Damper Systems via Chebyshev Polynomials

A numerical scheme based on Chebyshev polynomials for the determination of the response of spring-mass-damper systems is presented. The state vector of the differential equation of the spring-mass-damper system is expanded in terms of Chebyshev polynomials. This expansion reduces the original differential equations to a set of linear algebraic equations where the unknowns are the coefficient of Chebyshev polynomials. A formal procedure to generate the coefficient matrix and the right-hand side vector of this system of algebraic equations is discussed. The numerical efficiency of the proposed method is compared with that of Runge-Kutta method. It is shown that this scheme is accurate and is computationally efficient.