URI Mechanical Engineering Projects -- Vibrations

Engineering Academy of Southern New England
University of Rhode Island -- Mechanical Engineering Projects

Vibrations

MCE 464 - Vibrations is a senior elective course which provides an introductory treatment of vibration of lumped-mass systems. Course content contains free and forced vibration of undamped and damped mechanical systems with single and multi-degrees of freedom. The course outline includes:

The text for this course was Mechanical Vibrations, Third Edition, S. Rao, Addison-Wesley, 1995

As part of the EASNE Product Realization Process, Working Model software has been introduced in the course to provide students with a computational method to solve vibration problems. The software is very easy to use and allows students to build and analyze reasonably complex, two-dimensional vibratory systems.

Working Model was used in the following ways:

  1. demonstration of basic theory through special examples and side-by-side comparisons
  2. analysis of complex systems which would be difficult to do by hand calculation
  3. use as a design and product realization tool to build systems with multiple design or manufacturing conditions.

All students were provided diskettes with the following Working Model demonstration models:

Some of these examples were formally presented and discussed using our Champlin Computer Classroom, while other examples were left to individual student study. Several Working Model mini-lectures were given during the semester to acquaint students with particular software skills necessary to use the WM package.

Three Working Model homework assignments,

  1. Comparison Problem - One Degree of Freedom, Damped Vibration
  2. Design of an Accelerometer
  3. Aircraft Wing Design
were given requiring students to construct the model, run the simulation, perform post-simulation calculations and do some interpretation of the results. Two of these assigned problems had design/product development components.

send any comments to Dr. Martin Sadd (sadd@egr.uri.edu)