How can I animate springs in MATLAB?

I'm trying to animate a simple spring-mass system vibrating freely. I managed to animate a block vibrating according to the response of a free vibration using the method of continuos plots using a for loop. Now, i want to include the spring in the system so as to complete the movie. However, I'm having a hard time trying to do that, I'm a beginner in MATLAB, so I don't know much about the various functions available in it. I couldn't get the right source to help me out.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

One approach —

L = 1600;                                               % Vector Lengths
t = linspace(0, 16*pi-(1/L), L);                        % Eight Cycles
r = 1;                                                  % Radius
x = r*cos(t);                                           % X-Coordinate
y = r*sin(t);                                           % Y-Coordinate
tz = linspace(0, t(end), fix(L/2));                     % Length Governs Frequency Of Oscillation
zv = (1+sin(tz))*4;                                     % Oscillation

figure
for k = 1:numel(z)
    z = linspace(0, zv(k), L)+2;                        % Define Spring Length For This Cycle
    plot3(x, y, z, 'LineWidth',2.5)                     % Draw Spring
    axis([-1.5  1.5  -1.5 1.5  0 10])                   % Fix Axis Limits
    grid on                                             % Draw Grid
    drawnow                                             % Animate
end

It does not show the animation here, however it does work.

Experiment with it to get the result you want. (I did my best to document it in the comments.) In the loop, the ‘z’ value controls the length for each iteration, using the ‘zv’ value, however ‘zv’ can be anything. It does not have to be the vector I used here to test the code, so in reality it will be related to something in your animation. I have drawn it vertically here, however by changing the order of the plot3 call arguments, you can put it in different orientations. You can also use the rotate function to put it in other orientations, if necessary.

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