Vibration Fundamentals Training System SQI VFT

Description

An Ideal Tool for Optimizing Your Vibration Class Curriculum

The Vibration Fundamentals Training System (alias VFT) is a turn-key integrated educational package for teaching/learning the fundamental principles of mechanical vibration as well as engineering mechanics. It provides both a comprehensive hands-on experimental device and an instrumentation package including wireless sensors for performing laboratory exercises to enhance student understanding of vibration theory.
The VFT clearly brings classical theory to life by providing a convenient mean to validate predictions and to demonstrate the influence of parameter changes on system response visually. Students can perform virtual experiments using the vibration simulation software and then verify the results with actual experiments thereby reinforcing the learning of difficult principles. The VFT provides an ideal tool for damping free vibration experiments using the wireless sensors without affected by the damping associated with the sensor cables. It is a perfect tool for teaching mechanical vibration courses both at under graduate and graduate levels.

With an increase in high speed manufacturing and automation, it has become more important to use the theory of vibration for design and maintenance of machinery. This vibration theory is even more important in the monitoring and diagnosis of machinery malfunctions. Considering the importance and complexity of vibration principles, a course curriculum should include laboratory demonstration and hands-on experiments to help students understand the somewhat abstract concepts of vibration. To this date, most academic institutions include only theoretical lectures without laboratory exercises due a lack of an apparatus combined with an instrumentation setup. With SpectraQuest’s VFT, this deficiency has been resolved making hands-on vibration teaching now possible.

Controlled Experiments Expedite the Learning

SpectraQuest’s Vibration Fundamentals Training System (VFT) is an innovative tool you can use for teaching the fundamental principles of mechanical vibration. The VFT is well researched and designed for immediate implementation for vibration laboratory development. It is can be easily integrated with a typical vibration course taught at most institutions. The VFT provides a comprehensive hands-on experimental device, an instrumentation package, and experimental program with course curriculum for performing laboratory exercises to enhance student understanding of vibration theory. The bench-top apparatus has a spacious modular design featuring versatility, operational simplicity, and robustness. Each component is machined to high tolerances so it can be operated without conflicting vibration in a totally controlled environment. The instrumentation package includes wireless less accelerometers and transducers, precision servomotor for excitation, tachometer, and four channels simultaneously sampled data acquisition hardware, signal conditioners, and time and frequency domain analysis software. Also included are a software simulation of theory and a well-defined experimental program for free and forced vibration experiments ranging from single degree of freedom spring mass to continuous beam with different boundary conditions.
Students can perform both hands-on and virtual experiments to optimize the learning. The VFT is designed to perform both free and forced vibration experiments with and without damping. The basic VFT frame consists of two identical test stations mounted on a portable structure. It features into changeable restraint fixtures, optional force transducers to measure the support reactions, sensors to measure deflection and acceleration, and a variable frequency rotary shaker for forced excitation. It allows for the first time to perform almost damping free vibration experiments tp verify the theory using SpectraQuest in-house developed wireless sensor technology.

Features

• Fully integrated turn-key package consisting of comprehensive experimental device, wireless sensors, data acquisition instrumentation, analysis software, course curriculum, exercise book, and simulation software for virtual experimentation
• Robust, user friendly, modular, and compact bench-top device for performing controlled experiments
• Experimental setup for single and two-degrees of freedom spring-mass system (with and without damping)
• One and two-degrees of freedom torsional vibration (with and without damping)
• Vibration control experiments with viscoelastic damping and tuned-mass-damper
• Full experimental setup for beams with different boundary conditions, material, geometry, and length to understand effects on natural frequency and mode shapes
• User friendly software with pre-defined experiments integrated with data acquisition and data analysis
• Virtual experiment capabilities to learn the effects of parameters for each type of test configuration