The paper presents solutions to the direct and inverse problems on longitudinal vibrations of a rod with a variable cross-sectional area. The law of variation of the cross-sectional area is modeled as an exponential function of a polynomial of degree n . The method for reconstructing this function is based on representing the fundamental system of solutions of the direct problem in the form of a Maclaurin series in the variables x and λ. Examples of solutions for various section functions and various boundary conditions are given. It is shown that to recover n unknown coefficients of a polynomial, n eigenvalues are required, and the solution is dual. An unambiguous solution was obtained only for the case of elastic fixation at one of the rod’s ends. The numerical estimation of the method error was made using input data noise. It is shown that the error in finding the variable crosssectional area is less than 1% with the error in the eigenvalues of longitudinal vibrations not exceeding 0.0001.
