Rectilinear Plant of a closed loop control system to find zeta with varying mass and spring constant K.

A second-order system is fundamental to understanding the characteristics of the dynamics of a physical system. The higher-order equations can also be formed as an equivalent second-order to appreciate the behavior using defining parameters. In this work, an effort was made to develop a single-degree second-order Spring Mass Damper (SMD) using commonly available low-cost resources. The hardware allows the variations of parameters including mass, spring constant and damper. The integrated software with the hardware allows recording of the instrumented data and processing it to conclude on the dynamic characteristics. The hardware work was preceded by the design of the whole setup in Solidworks matching the dimensions of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) items. This was followed by designing individual components to suit the functionality, dimensions and adaptability of an experiment. The actuator was designed to function with a DC motor. This actuator was used to hit the mass and simulate an impulse force to the system. Two Linear Variable Differential Transformers (LVDTs) were utilized as position sensors for instrumentation. The LVDT gave the evolution of the position of mass over time. The interface between the hardware and software was made through an NI DAQ 6009. The software, in Labview, front end enabled controlling and capturing of data on the screen for further processing into dynamics parameters. The interface screen provided instruction and logic of computations for dynamics parameters.