Dynamics and Vibrations MATLAB tutorial

Dynamics and Vibrations
MATLAB tutorial
School of Engineering
Brown University
This tutorial is intended to provide a crash-course on using a small subset of the features of MATLAB. If
you complete the whole of this tutorial, you will be able to use MATLAB to integrate equations of motion
for dynamical systems, plot the results, and use MATLAB optimizers and solvers to make design
decisions.
You can work step-by-step through this tutorial, or if you prefer, you can brush up on topics from the list
below. The tutorial contains more information than you need to start solving dynamics problems using
MATLAB. If you are working through the tutorial for the first time, you should complete sections 1-15.
You can do the other sections later, when they are needed.
1. What is MATLAB
2. How does MATLAB differ from MAPLE?
3. Why do we have to learn MATLAB?
4. Starting MATLAB
5. Basic MATLAB windows
6. Simple calculations using MATLAB
7. MATLAB help
8. Errors associated with floating point arithmetic (and an example of a basic loop)
9. Vectors in MATLAB
10. Matrices in MATLAB
11. Plotting and graphics in MATLAB
12. Working with M-files
13. MATLAB Functions
14. Organizing complex calculations as functions in an M-file
15. Solving ordinary differential equations (ODEs) using MATLAB
15.1 Solving a basic differential equation
15.2 How the ODE solver works
15.3 Solving a differential equation with adjustable parameters
15.4 Solving a vector valued differential equation
15.5 Solving a ...