Structural displacements caused by earthquakes, a practical application of differential equations

The teaching of differential equations in engineering subjects allow students to mold physically real models to which giving solutions provide practical utility. The model solved in this work is one of bilinear oscillation of one degree of liberty which is used to describe the displacements that a structure suffers when acceleration is subjected to its base, like those of an earthquake. The city of Oaxaca is one of the cities with the highest seismicity levels of Mexico so that the difficulties of structures subjected to earthquake related accelerations is well known among the students of this state. Taking advantage of this context, a project was set up in the differential equations class which consisted of giving numerical solutions to the model equation through diverse methods and compare them. The conclusions compiled in this work include students’ impressions when developing the project, discussion of their results and its application in the identification of structural risk.