Abstract:

Numerous mechanical machines and structures include parts that represent or can be modeled, with good approximation, as homogeneous rectilinear bars, subjected to various support conditions. During the work of the containing systems, these parts can have longitudinal, torsional or bending vibrations. The last of these categories of vibrations is often the most important, since they can produce important effects, useful or harmful for the proper functioning of the system, as well as for the comfort and health of the human operator. These reasons have led to the development of various study methods, some of them analytical and the others numerical, which evaluate the characteristics of the bending vibrations of homogeneous rectilinear bars. However, both these approaches are often laborious and require relatively high mathematical knowledge from the students. The paper presents a program, developed by the authors for the graphical simulation of bending vibrations. The program, which determines eigenfrequencies and displays animatedly the corresponding eigenshapes of vibration of homogeneous rectilinear bars, represents a useful interactive teaching tool, aimed to provide students in engineering faculties an improved understanding of the correlation between the real phenomenon and the analytical model.

Keywords:

e-learning, bending vibrations, classical mechanics, engineering faculties.