Mechanical Vibrations Modal Analysis Project with Arduinos

This paper details a new laboratory project in a senior-level Mechanical Engineering Vibrations course. Students are to determine the first four natural frequencies of a 6061 Aluminum free-free beam in a laboratory using three methods: (1) use idealized theoretical continuous beam model (2) use Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and (3) determine the natural frequencies experimentally. Using student survey data, it is shown that the project bolstered the following skills: (A) use of measurement equipment to acquire and transmit real-world data, (B) performing a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) and creating the Power Spectral Density (PSD) plot of empirical data, (C) creating and modifying FEA code in Matlab to find natural frequencies and test for convergence of results and (D) connecting the distinct topics of the course together.