Mechanical engineering education via projects in multibody dynamics

Abstract

The present contribution focuses on the feasibility and interest of setting up a multi-disciplinary project in the field of multibody dynamics, as a sequel to the undergraduate course in classical mechanics. The pedagogical objectives of this "learning layer" cover various aspects, namely: give the student the opportunity to exploit and analyze the equations of motion for a real application, make them able to formulate consistent hypotheses for such applications and promote an actual multi-disciplinary activity (mechanics, numerical methods, computer science and CAD). The project is performed by groups of students and is organized in the frame of a global active pedagogical process which characterizes our undergraduate engineering program at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium). After more than 10 years of experience, we can claim that this multi-disciplinary project really improves the student's skills in the field of multibody system modeling and computer simulation, including a timid but existing engineering attitude with respect to the results they obtain. Among the educational ingredients that make this project really fruitful educationally speaking, one must emphasize a key point of the approach, relating to the use of the symbolic multibody program ROBOTRAN to assist students in producing their equations of motion. Contrarily to research activities, the use of the ROBOTRAN symbolic models are exploited in such project, more for an educational motivation than for the computer efficiency of the simulation. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.