5/27/2017 DifferentialEquationsUndeterminedCoefficients

UndeterminedCoef icients
Inthissectionwewilltakealookatthefirstmethodthatcanbeusedtofindaparticularsolutiontoa
nonhomogeneousdifferentialequation.


Oneofthemainadvantagesofthismethodisthatitreducestheproblemdowntoanalgebraproblem.The
algebracangetmessyonoccasion,butformostoftheproblemsitwillnotbeterriblydifficult.Anothernice
thingaboutthismethodisthatthecomplementarysolutionwillnotbeexplicitlyrequired,althoughaswe
willseeknowledgeofthecomplementarysolutionwillbeneededinsomecasesandsowellgenerallyfind
thataswell.

Therearetwodisadvantagestothismethod.First,itwillonlyworkforafairlysmallclassofg(t)s.The
classofg(t)sforwhichthemethodworks,doesincludesomeofthemorecommonfunctions,however,there
aremanyfunctionsoutthereforwhichundeterminedcoefficientssimplywontwork.Second,itisgenerally
onlyusefulforconstantcoefficientdifferentialequations.

Themethodisquitesimple.Allthatweneedtodoislookatg(t)andmakeaguessastotheform
ofYP(t)leavingthecoefficient(s)undetermined(andhencethenameofthemethod).Plugtheguessintothe
differentialequationandseeifwecandeterminevaluesofthecoefficients.Ifwecandeterminevaluesfor
thecoefficientsthenweguessedcorrectly,ifwecantfindvaluesforthecoefficientsthenweguessed
incorrectly.

Itsusuallyeasiertoseethismethodinactionratherthantotryanddescribeit,soletsjumpintosome
examples.

Example1Determineaparticularsolutionto


Solution
Thepointhereistofindaparticularsolution,howeverthefirstthing
thatweregoingtodoisfindthecomplementarysolutiontothis
differentialequation.Recallthatthecomplementarysolutioncomes
fromsolving,


Thecharacteristicequationforthisdifferentialequationanditsroots
are.

http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/DE/UndeterminedCoefficients.aspx 1/1