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Tacoma Narrows Torsional Flutter: Resonance to Collapse (2D)

A 2D damped-driven torsional oscillator models the Tacoma Narrows deck: wind-driven vortex shedding pushes its forcing frequency toward the deck's natural torsional frequency, and past a critical wind speed self-excited aeroelastic flutter drives the twist amplitude to structural failure.

Chaos & Dynamics2DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This 2D companion reduces the 3D Tacoma Narrows scene to its governing equation: a single torsional degree of freedom driven by wind-speed-dependent vortex shedding, with an aeroelastic negative-damping term that switches on past a critical wind speed. Watch the deck's twist mode shape build from gentle wave-like oscillation toward runaway flutter as wind speed approaches the critical value, with live amplitude, shedding-frequency and damping readouts.

⚙ Under the hood

aeroelasticityflutterresonancetacoma narrowstorsional oscillationstructural dynamics

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install