Applied Dynamics Laboratory

This facility dates back to the mid 90s and is a multi-purposed laboratory with many small scale experimental rigs looking at the fundamental phenomena mostly in the area of nonlinear dynamics but also solid mechanics. We can investigate impact and fiction dynamics, rotor dynamics and control, fatigue in structures, helical buckling, contact mechanics, rock fracture, energy harvesting and many others applied dynamics problems.

These rigs are all well instrumented and connected to a data acquisition system using LabView platform for real-time response monitoring. There are also several size electro-mechanical shakers which can be used for harmonic or random tests. The recorded data are then post processed with custom written GUIs in Matlab. These rigs are designed to be flexible so they can be easily modified to perform new experiments to facilitate proof of concept stages of large projects or support fundamental work in the area of nonlinear dynamics, which is the research strength of the Centre for Applied Dynamics Research (CADR).