Structural Vibration View 0.1.0

First release.

This is educational software. It exists so that students, engineers, researchers
and anyone building something can see how a simple structure deflects while it
vibrates, rather than picture it from a formula. A mode shape drawn in a textbook is a
frozen curve with arrows; here it is a structure bending, slowly enough to follow, from
whatever angle you choose.

Structural Vibration View animates the free vibration of a structure in a 3D view you
can rotate, pan and zoom while it moves. Natural frequencies are computed from the
dimensions and the material rather than typed in.

It is a teaching tool rather than an analysis package: the structures are uniform, the
results are closed-form, and a real part with holes, welds or joints needs a finite
element model instead.

What it does

• Six systems in three families. Cantilever, simply supported and clamped-clamped
  beams (Euler-Bernoulli); simply supported and fully clamped plates (Kirchhoff, the
  clamped one by Warburton's formula, within about 1% of the published values); and a
  spring-mass oscillator.
• Real frequencies. From the length, width, thickness, density, Young's modulus and
  Poisson's ratio, with the boundary conditions of the type chosen. Change the thickness
  and every mode follows.
• Slow motion that fits the structure. Modes run from tens of hertz to kilohertz, far
  too fast to watch. At Speed 1x, mode 1 always takes two seconds per cycle whatever it
  really runs at. The time readout stays in real structural time.
• One mode, or three at once. The Structure Parameters tab animates the mode chosen
  at its top, alone and undamped. The Modal Superposition tab adds up to three modes with
  their own amplitudes and phases, and a damping ratio for the decay.
• Ten material presets, or your own density, stiffness and Poisson's ratio.
• Save and reopen a session. File > Save writes the type, both tabs, the playback
  state and the camera to a readable .tvv file.
• Dimensions, material, selected mode, window position and theme are remembered between
  sessions.

Downloads

• structuralVibrationViewSetup-0.1.0.exe — Windows installer, per-user, no
  administrator rights.
• StructuralVibrationView-0.1.0-portable.zip — the same build as a folder, for anyone
  who would rather not run an installer.
• StructuralVibrationView-0.1.0-macos.zip — the macOS application bundle.

The bundles are large because they carry Qt and VTK, which is what draws the 3D view.

Known limitations

• The macOS bundle is not code-signed or notarised. Gatekeeper refuses it on first
  open: right-click the app and choose Open, or run
  xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine StructuralVibrationView.app.
• The 3D view needs OpenGL 3.2. A virtual machine without graphics acceleration cannot
  draw it.
• Frequencies come from closed-form theory for uniform beams and plates. There is no
  finite element model, no material damping model, and no forced response.