Version 1.0, August 31, 2001, Copyright, Hugh Jack 1993-2001
· When doing analysis of a system that has both a steady state and transient response it can be handy to do a phase plane analysis to help separate out the components.
· To construct a phase plane graph we plot the value of a response variable against it's first or second derivative.
· The shape of the graph exposes the phase between the displacement, and one of the derivatives. Here we see the system start to spiral out to an outer radius. The change in the radius of the spiral is the transient, the final radius is the steady state. If the forcing function changed, the path would then shift to a new steady state position.