Integrating dynamic systems materials into a mechanical engineering curriculum through innovative use of web-based acquisition and hands-on application and use of virtual graphical user interfaces - Part 4: Alternate approaches for teaching Fourier series applications

A new approach to teaching Fourier Series and FFT processing, using LabVIEW as a mechanism to deploy the material, was presented. A project involving the development of both time and frequency domain signals which are developed from sinusoidal signals to approximate standard square waves along with filtering concepts was described. With the utilization of LabVIEW, the students were required to "build" their own FFT analyzer to analyze both simple and complex signals. The students performed much better overall and clearly identified that the material was much more intuitively obvious with the new approach. The students have clearly identified that they enjoyed the new approach to learning this material and generally appear to have a deeper understanding of the material presented in this fashion. © 2007, Society for Experimental Mechanics.