Transient dynamics of a lightly damped, roll-forced pendulum

A roll-forced pendulum is studied as a rudimentary model for a sea-state driven ship crane in this work. Centripetal acceleration measurements were made in a number of non-resonant forcing conditions. In addition to large-amplitude resonant responses, a variety of beating responses were found in the transient mode; this behavior is significant due to the light damping and thus long influence of the transient dynamics. The (transient as well as steady-state) frequency content of the centripetal acceleration spectrum is predicted and compared to experiment using power spectral methods and spectrograms.