Demonstrating the identification of nonlinear vibrating systems to undergraduate students

The identification of nonlinear dynamic systems is increasingly becoming a necessary part of vibration testing and there is significant research effort devoted to it. However, as the current methodologies are still not suitable for the identification of general nonlinear systems the subject is very rarely introduced to undergraduate students. In this paper, recent progress in developing an expert approach to nonlinear system identification is used in order to demonstrate the subject within the context of an undergraduate course or as an introductory tool for postgraduate students. The demonstration is based around a software package of an Expert System designed to apply systematically a wide range of identification approaches to the system under investigation. It is shown that the software can be used to demonstrate the need for nonlinear system identification, the complexity of the procedure, the possibility of failure and the good chances of success when enough physical information about the system is available.