solve Equilibrium Position of Mass - Spring - Damped System

I am considering a damped system, with equation as below. I am asked to find the equilibrium position of the system, which I know being 0. So, in MATLAB I substitute the derivatives of x with zero (by using the definition of Equilibrium Position of the system), and then try to solve for x. This results in an empy sym. Anyone knows where the problem is?

syms x(t) m k b

systemDamped = m * diff(x, t, 2) + b * diff(x, t, 1) + k * x(t) == 0;     
systemDampedEquilibrium = subs(systemDamped, {diff(x, t, 1), diff(x, t, 2), k}, {0 0 100});
EquilibriumPosition = solve(systemDampedEquilibrium, x(t));

[Alan Stevens]

... m * diff(x, t, 20) + ...

20? I suspect this should be 2.

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

As Alan pointed out, you probably wanted to take the 2nd derivative of x there in your system, not the 20th derivative. The term in the differential equation you posed wants to multiply mass with acceleration, which would be diff(x,t,2).

syms x(t) m k b
systemDamped = m * diff(x, t, 2) + b * diff(x, t, 1) + k * x(t) == 0;     
systemDampedEquilibrium = subs(systemDamped, {diff(x, t, 1), diff(x, t, 2), k}, {0 0 100})

systemDampedEquilibrium(t) = 

100 x(t)=0

isolate(systemDampedEquilibrium,x(t))

ans = 

x(t)=0

What a difference an extra zero makes.

[Antonio d'Aniello]

Yes sorry it was a typo. But technically “isolate” is not the same as “solve” the equation right?