Carrier Air Conditioner Beat Frequency

The top image is the air conditioner mounted near a back corner of my home. It is Carrier model 24AHA424A003. It has a scroll compressor, model ZP20K6E-PFV-130. I measured its output sound using my Android Smartphone. The condenser motor nominal speed is 800 RPM (13.3… Read more

MV Chetzemoka Ferry Acoustics

MV Chetzemoka Ferry Air Vent Pipes I recently rode on the MV Chetzemoka Ferry which was running between Tacoma’s Port Defiance and Vashon Island’s Tahlequah terminal. The ship is powered by a pair of EMD 12-710 diesel engines rated at 3000 hp each at 900… Read more

Matlab Butterworth High Pass Filter, 6th order

Matlab’s built-in function for Butterworth filtering has stability issues. The following code snippet yields an unstable filter. The cutoff frequency is 4 Hz. The sample rate is 20000 Hz. The filter is a high pass, sixth order. fh=4;sr=20000;order=6;Wn=fh/(sr/2);[bb,aa] = butter(order,Wn,’high’);flag = isstable(bb,aa);if(flag==1)fprintf(‘\n filter is stable… Read more

Spring-Action Teeter Totter Natural Frequency

Teeter-Totter, Playground along Riverview Blvd, Kent, Washington State I gave the teeter-totter an initial displacement, without human riders, and recorded the damped sine oscillation with my Android smartphone accelerometer app. The natural frequency was 2.1 Hz with 0.6% damping. The frequency would decrease with riders.… Read more

Goodtime III Sound & Vibration

My family and I recently took the Argosy Lock Cruise from Lake Union, through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, to the Seattle Waterfront, aboard the Goodtime III. The ship’s main engines are Caterpillar 3408’s coupled with Twin Disc MG514 reduction gears. Auxiliary power is supplied… Read more