2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Mechanical vibrations course is a required course for our mechanical engineering program. It is a 3-0-3 course for senior students with 3-hour lectures, zero lab hours per week, and a total of three credits. The governing equations of motion for a vibration system are differential equations. Naturally, in the mechanical vibration course, there are lots of derivations of the solutions of solving differential equations. Without these derivations, students will have difficulty understanding the solutions that might affect them to implement vibration theory in practice. Due to this fact, some students lost interest in the course and said that it was difficult and boring. To motivate students to be interested in the course and facilitate them to have a better understanding of mechanical vibration theory, we created two analytical-type design projects. These two design projects are “The design check of a beam under a harmonic exciting force” and “The vibration isolation and absorber”. They are meaningful mechanical design projects in which the mechanical vibration theory is implemented. This paper presents the two projects, and their implementation and shows the class survey results. Most students agreed that the class design projects significantly facilitated them to have a better understanding of mechanical vibration theory and helped them to establish the connection between mechanical vibration theory and its applications and the class design projects should be kept for the mechanical vibration course in the future.