Applications of Linear Algebra in Engineering

1. Balancing a Chemical Equation:

Theory:
Another typical application of linear systems to chemistry is balancing a chemical
equation. The rationale behind this is the Law of conservation of mass which states the
following:
“Mass is neither created nor destroyed in any chemical reaction. Therefore balancing of
equations requires the same number of atoms on both sides of a chemical reaction. The
mass of all the reactants (the substances going into a reaction) must equal the mass of
the products (the substances produced by the reaction).”

Example:

C2H 6 + O2 → CO2 + H2O.

Balancing this chemical reaction means finding values of x, y, z and t so that the number
of atoms of each element is the same on both sides of the equation:

xC2H 6 + yO2 → zCO2 + tH2O.

This gives the following linear system:

The general solution of the above system is

Since we are looking for whole values of the variables x, y z, and t, choose x=2 and get
y=7, z= 4 and t=6. The balanced equation is then:

2C2H 6 + 7O2 → 4CO2 + 6H2O.

2. Coupled Oscillations:

Theory:
Coupled oscillations is a linear chain of identical non-interacting bodies connected to
each other and to fixed endpoints by identical springs.

Example:
Case 1:
Consider two identical bodies joined up with identical springs on a frictionless track as
follows:

Here A and B represent the equilibrium positions of the two masses. Let x1(t) and x2(t) be
the distances from the equilibrium positions of the two masses at time t and let k be the
spring constant.

The force acting on the first body has two parts by Hooke’s law: the first part is –kx1 due
to the leftmost spring and the second part is k(x2-x1) due to the center spring. The net
force acting on the first mass is then

Similarly, the net force acting on the second mass is

Applying the second Newton’s of motion gives the following system of differential
equations:

This can be written in matrix form as follows:

Let us now find the eigenvalues of the matrix

that appears in the above equation.

Recall that the eigenvalues of A are those values of λ satisfying the equation:

where I is the identity matrix of the same size as A:

Let us now find corresponding eigenvectors. If is an eigenvector

of A corresponding to the eigenvalue 1, then one would have , or (A- I)X=0:

which means that a=b. So

is a basis for the eigenspace corresponding to 1. Similarly, one can show that the vector

is a basis for the eigenspace corresponding to 3.

Now let
then where

is the “diagonal form” of A. Note that so equation (*) above becomes

Now, let us consider the following change of variables:

so,

Taking the second derivatives gives:

so equation (**) above becomes

after simplification. This gives the following system of harmonic equations:

that we know how to solve by the above simple case of a single mass attached to a spring.