A Spring-Pendulum Educational Device for Teaching Dynamics and Control Courses

This article proposes a spring-pendulum device for teaching dynamics and control courses. This article also provides a teaching syllabus that introduces the course content, which mainly includes dynamic modeling, numerical simulation, experimental verification, and advanced learning. Students could use Lagrange equation to derive the dynamic model of forced vibration of the spring pendulum, and predict dynamic behaviors of the spring pendulum through numerical simulation. Students could also use the spring-pendulum device to verify the effectiveness of the dynamic model. In addition, students could choose the advanced learning to derive approximate solutions for the vibration of the spring pendulum by using multi-scale methods, and understand the conditions under which internal resonance occurs. The advanced learning also includes designing a smoother to suppress the coupled vibration of the spring pendulum, and comparing the robustness of the smoother with other controllers through experiments and simulations. By using the spring-pendulum educational device to study dynamics and control courses, students could also gain a reference understanding of other coupled-vibration systems similar to the spring pendulum.