Environment for engineering design, analysis, and simulation for education using MATLAB via the World Wide Web. I. Environment description and development

Abstract

In Part I of this paper, we present the development of tools for engineering design, analysis and simulation over the World Wide Web accessible via a web browser. The tools utilize the power and versatility provided by the software package MATLAB and the features of the web toolbox. This work aims at improving the understanding of engineering fundamentals through interactive real-time simulation. The current environment consists of a number of modules for the interactive real-time simulation of linear time invariant dynamic systems and for analysis and synthesis of planar mechanisms. The properly designed input interface facilitates the easy understanding of the required inputs from the user. The returned information to the user's web browser consists of ASCII (textual), graphical, and pictorial representations, and provides information of the input and solutions. In addition, where appropriate, the user has the option to view an animation of the system. This work demonstrates advantages of using this technology to aid in classroom instruction, ease of implementation for application in other domains, and provides valuable analysis tools to students and engineering professionals. Examples will be presented in Part II to demonstrate the developed tools. Users with access to the Internet can use the developed mechanism synthesis and analysis modules at http://zodhia.uta.edu/development. ß

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