Experience-Based Lecture for Vibration Engineering Using Dual-Scale Experiments: Free Vibration of an Actual Seismic Building and Controlling the Vibration of Scale-Down Experimental Model

This paper proposes an experience-based lecture style that offers dual-scale experiments in combination. Lectures for vibration engineering were designed based on the proposed style and offered to undergraduate students. In the proposed style, experiments on free vibration on a seismic building for second-year students and advanced vibration control using an effective device for fourth-year students are examined in combination. The lecture style trials were repeated twice, once each in 2015 and 2016, with about two hundred second-year students; the students felt the free vibration of the five-story building which had a 6,100 ton weight inside and witnessed the mechanism of the base-isolated layer. To follow the demonstration steps, we developed an experimental device. The experimental device is composed of a vibration component corresponding to a building, and a motor cart with a handle corresponding to the ground. These are connected via a linear actuator that can exert one-dimensional force on the vibration component as a function of the input voltage. In the lectures conducted in 2017 and 2018, the students oscillate the cart and observe the motion of the vibration component. In addition, the virtual reality cameras for offering students a visually rich experience attracted students' interest. The questionnaire results showed that almost all of the students valued the lectures as useful. Since most of the students answered that the combination of the large-scale demonstration and scale-down experiment was useful, the proposed lecture style achieved the expected overall goals.