Relative Displacement from Two Accelerometer Time Histories

Assume that input and response acceleration PSDs have been measured.  The corresponding displacement PSDs can be readily calculated. But the relative displacement cannot be calculated accurately because the phase angles are discarded in the PSD calculation. The best method is to perform the relative displacement… Read more

Some Vibration Testing Q & A

Here are some questions from students that I recently received for shaker table testing of equipment. How are vibration standards developed and how do they relate to the operational environment? Standards may have different purposes.  Some of the common ones are: Envelope the actual field… Read more

Acoustics, Seismic & Mechanical Vibration Waves

Here are some papers… Notes on Mechanical Shock & Bending Waves Waves in Structures * * * Functions for calculating wave speeds are given in: Matlab script: Vibrationdata Signal Analysis Package The functions can be accessed via >> vibrationdata > Miscellaneous > Acoustics & Vibroacoustics… Read more

HALT/HASS for Product Reliability

Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) is a process for ruggedization of preproduction products.  It is also referred to as AST (Accelerated Stress Testing). Highly Accelerated Stress Screening (HASS) is the production screen for products once they have been characterized in HALT. HALT and HASS each use… Read more

Normal Tolerance Factors

Maximum predicted environment (MPE) levels can be derived for acoustic, shock, and vibration levels where flight data is available.  The enveloping for multiple sets of data can be performed using tolerance factors as described in the following papers. Normal Tolerance Factors for Upper Tolerance Limits:… Read more

Electronic Circuit Board Design Reliability Lessons Learned

Here are some papers: Electronic Circuit Board Design Reliability Lessons Learned: electronics_design_reliability.pdf Effect of Conformal Coating on Circuit Board Vibration Response:  conformal_coat.pdf * * * Steinberg’s Vibration Analysis for Electronic Equipment describes the methods for designing electronic equipment that must work with a high degree of… Read more