Mechanical resonance Mechanical resonance Mechanical resonance is the tendency of a mechanical system to respond at greater amplitude when the frequency of its oscillations matches the system's natural frequency of vibration (its "resonance frequency" or "resonant frequency") than it does at other frequencies. It may cause violent swaying motions and even catastrophic failure in improperly constructed structures including bridges, buildings and airplanes. This is a phenomenon known as resonance disaster. Avoiding resonance disasters is a major concern in every building, tower and bridge construction project. The Taipei 101 building relies on a 660-ton pendulum—a tuned mass damper—to modify the response at resonance.
Amplitude versus offset down the Zoeppritz equations. Due to its physical origin, AVO can also be known as amplitude versus angle (AVA), but AVO is the more commonly used term because the offset is what a geophysicist can vary in order to change the angle of incidence. (See diagram) For a seismic wave reflecting off an interface between two media at normal incidence, the expression for the reflection coefficient is relatively simple: where formula_2 and formula_3 are the acoustic impedances of the first and second medium, respectively. The situation becomes much more complicated in the case of non-normal incidence, due to mode conversion