For the last two weeks, I tried out tackling the differential equation that describes the motion of the bistable beam using a reduced-order model of w(x,t), the transverse deflection of the beam. By approximating w as the combination of some functions of only x or only t, I was able to replicate the results of a bistable beam problem in a related research paper. The graph is one of my Matlab plots, with the two curves corresponding to the two stable stages of the beam.