Abstract
This paper is on the development of Multibody Dynamics Analysis Education Tools. To achieve this, the authors investigated the basic features which are required for this purpose. The authors also investigated the best environment to satisfy these features, and found that Java Applet is very useful for this purpose. Java Applet is free to install on a common PC, and every student can make use of the developed tools only if he/she can make use of a Web Explorer through Internet. Based on this idea, the authors have been developing the education support tools: especially for the education on vibration. The students can set the parameters on the Webpage, calculate the motion, and display the results as the Animation of the motion and Graphs of the motion at a point of interest. The transactions are very simple and the students make use of these tools at almost any place where they can make use of Internet. However, the development of these tools is not so easy because coding programs by Java Applet is not so easy. It is very important and valuable to customize/ improve the program, but it is not so easy especially for students. Recently, the authors found that EXCEL+VBA is very useful and powerful not only to overcome this shortcomings but also to have good performance. So, they are shifting the development of the tools to this side. The students can make use of EXCEL on almost all the PC's as almost standard, and they also can use VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) as a powerful language with Excel. The authors developed an educational tool for Planar MBD by using EXCEL+VBA. As the MBD analysis method, the authors adopted the augmented method in this tools.
