HaydenProject — AERO3220 HW4

Aerospace Engineering undergraduate homework project by Hayden Molloy.

Assignment

Course: AERO3220
HW: 4
Topic: Coupled two-mass spring-damper system — numerical simulation and analysis

The system models two vertically stacked masses connected by springs and a damper, with an external forcing function applied to the bottom mass. Five parameter cases are simulated by varying damping coefficient and forcing frequency.

Files

File	Description
`AERO3220_HW4.m`	MATLAB simulation script
`AERO3220_HW4.pdf`	Professor's original assignment
`AERO3220_HW4_block_diagram.md`	System block diagrams including transfer-function form and state-space form
`MEMORY.md`	AI agent context file — read before making changes
`.gitignore`	MATLAB and macOS artifact exclusions

Block Diagrams

AERO3220_HW4_block_diagram.md contains several views of the system:

Transfer Function Block Diagram — gain blocks and 1/s integrators showing the coupled dynamics
System Equations Diagram — signal flow of the coupled differential equations
State Space Form — ẋ = Ax + Bu with explicit A and B matrices
Program Flow Diagram — how the MATLAB script executes
Solver Subsystem — internals of the eom_two_mass function

Physics

Two coupled second-order ODEs:

\ddot{z}_1 = -\frac{k_1}{m_1}z_1 + \frac{k_1}{m_1}z_2 \ddot{z}_2 = \frac{k_1}{m_2}z_1 - \frac{k_1+k_2}{m_2}z_2 - \frac{b}{m_2}\dot{z}_2 + \frac{1}{m_2}u(t)

Solved numerically with MATLAB ode45 over t = [0, 200] seconds for 5 forcing/damping cases.

For AI Agents

Before making any changes, read MEMORY.md for full session context, including physics details, file descriptions, known rendering constraints for the Mermaid diagrams, and conversation history.

After completing significant changes, update MEMORY.md — specifically the Conversation History Summary and any relevant sections — so future agents have accurate context.

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