Bead on a Rotating Hoop

Siva Srinivas Kolukula

Structural Mechanics Laboratory
IGCAR, Kalpakkam
INDIA Email: allwayzitzme@gmail.com

1. Introduction
Consider a bead of mass m sliding freely on a hoop of radius R rotating with angular velocity ω0
in a constant gravitational field with acceleration g as shown in Figure 1.

Since the bead is on rotating hoop, it moves on the

surface of the sphere of radius R. We use the spherical
coordinates to describe the position of the bead. The
position of the bead is given as follows

,   
  

,   

 

,     (1.1)

The velocity components of the bead are as follows:

Figure 1: Bead on a rotating hoop

        
  

    
   
  

    
 (1.2)

2. Lagrange’s Equations of motion for bead

The kinetic and potential energies of the bead are given as follows

   

 
 
  (2.1)

  1    (2.2)

Where θ = 0 is the zero potential energy point. Therefore the Lagrangian      is

        
   1   

(2.3)

The Lagrange’s equation for θ is

" "
! # 0 2.4
 " "

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Thus one gets the equations of motion for bead on rotating hoop:

( 
 )    ,  0
*
(2.5)
+

In the equation (2.5) frictional forces are not considered. We can easily include the velocity
dependent frictional forces in the equation. Let v be the frictional coefficient of the bead on the hoop,
on adding the frictional forces the equation of motion becomes

(  
- *

 )    ,  0 (2.6)
. +

3. Numerical Integration of Equation

The equation of motion (2.5) can be time integrated to know the trajectory/ position of the
bead at every time step using methods like Euler method, Runge-Kutta method etc,. Runge-Kutta
method is better and more accurate. To apply these techniques the equation of motion is transferred to
two first order differential equations as follows:

/  0  1
2
(3.1)

Equation (3.1) defines the state of the bead. Its first order time derivative is given by


/  3 -  * 4
 .  
+    
(3.2)

To solve the above first order differential equations initial values are required i.e.  5  are required.

4. Code for Bead on a Rotating Hoop

A code is written in MATLAB for the bead on rotating hoop. The equation of motion is solved
using ODE45 of the MATLAB. Animation of the bead motion is plotted. The following are the values used
in the code and can be changed accordingly.

Acceleration due to gravity, g = 9.81 m/s2

Mass of the bob, M = 10 N
Radius of the rotating hoop, R = 2 m
Frictional coefficient of the bead, V = 0.5
Angular Velocity of the rotating hoop, ω0 = 20 rad/s

The following are the initial values used in the code

6
  0.
Initial values can be changed accordingly to the requirement. The following figure shows the plots
obtained for the bead with the above values run for 20 seconds.

The values of the bead in the code can be changed and the motion of bead can be studied. One
can study the interesting behaviour in the motion of the bead by playing around with the code changing
the values.

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 Figure 2: Simulation of Bead on rotating hoop

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