Development and application of computer software for simulation of vibration analysis in education

The paper outlines a method of developing a user friendly package to assist students with their experimental studies of vibration. This package was developed using Windows-based MICROSOFT EXCEL and VISUAL BASIC. Sets of data obtained from two separate experiments are fed into the software using the spreadsheet, due to its ease of accepting a large number of input data and their subsequent editing. The VISUAL BASIC helps to have user friendly pull down menus and tool bars for various analysis choices. The analysis is carried out with output data in tabular and graphical form simulating the system. The students are therefore free from having to do tedious analysis and forming the plots and can spend more time on learning the process and improving their accuracy of measurement. The software also acts as a self learning package with steps carefully explained, so the effort from the laboratory supervisor is minimised