This book is intended for a vibration course in an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering curriculum. It is based on my lecture notes of a course (ME370) that I have been teaching for many years at The Pennsylvania State University (PSU), University Park. This vibration course is a required core course in the PSU mechanical engineering curriculum and is taken by junior-level or third-year students. Textbooks that have been used at PSU are as follows: Hutton (1981) and Rao (1995, First Edition 1986). In addition, I have used the book by Thomson and Dahleh (1993, First Edition 1972) as an important reference book while teaching this course. It will be a valid question if one asks why I am writing another book when there are already a large number of excellent textbooks on vibration since Den Hartog wrote the classic book in 1956. One reason is that most of the books are intended for senior-level undergraduate and graduate students. As a result, our faculties have not found any book that can be called ideal for our junior-level course. Another motivation for writing this book is that I have developed certain unique ways of presenting vibration concepts in response to my understanding of the background of a typical undergraduate student in our department and the available time during a semester. Some of the examples are as follows: review of selected topics in mechanics; the description of the chapter on single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems in terms of equivalent mass, equivalent stiffness, and equivalent damping; unified treatment of various forced response problems such as base excitation and rotating balance; introduction of system thinking, highlighting the fact that SDOF analysis is a building block for multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) and continuous system analyses via modal analysis; and a simple introduction of finite element analysis to connect continuous system and MDOF analyses.

As mentioned before, there are a large number of excellent books on vibration. But, because of a desire to include everything, many of these books often become difficult for undergraduate students. In this book, all the basic concepts in mechanical vibration are clearly identified and presented in a simple manner with illustrative and practical examples. I have also attempted to make this book self-contained as much as possible; for example, materials needed from previous courses, such as differential equation and engineering mechanics, are presented. At the end of each chapter, exercise problems are included. The use of MATLAB software is also included.