[Phys-L] damped oscillations of a piston

[Carl Mungan <mungan@usna.edu>]

In a pair of recent papers, I discuss the damping of a piston enclosing an ideal gas in a cylinder in the absence of any explicit friction, viscosity, or turbulence.

In the first paper, the damping is due to thermal transfer in and out of the cylinder:

https://www.usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/_files/documents/Publications/TPT37.pdf <https://www.usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/_files/documents/Publications/TPT37.pdf> 

In the second paper, the cylinder is adiabatic and the damping is due to the pressure change in the vicinity of the moving piston:

https://www.usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/_files/documents/Publications/EJP22.pdf <https://www.usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/_files/documents/Publications/EJP22.pdf> 

Thus, unlike a mass on a Hookean spring, for which one can idealize away all dissipation so that the oscillations are undamped, it is never possible to do that for a mass bouncing on an ideal gas.

 I claim no novelty to the ideas, as all the concepts already exist in the literature. My contribution has merely been to collate them and present them in a simple form. -Carl

-- 
Carl E. Mungan, Professor of Physics  410-293-6680 <> (O) -3729 (F)
Naval Academy Stop 9c, 572C Holloway Rd, Annapolis MD 21402-1363
mailto:mungan@usna.edu <mailto:mungan@usna.edu>     http://usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/ <http://usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/>