Pyrotechnic Shock Spurious Trend Removal

Revised software uploaded on January 9, 2013 Accelerometers signals for pyrotechnic events often have spurious offsets. Numerous potential causes include: 1.  Excitation of the accelerometer’s piezoelectric crystal natural frequency 2.  Signal conditioner overload 3.  Base strain sensitivity 4.  Instrumentation noise 5.  Electromagnetic interference These causes… Read more

Shock & Vibration Response Spectra & Software Training

I am offering another Shock & Vibration course.  The next course date is February 26-28, 2013 in Huntsville, Alabama. Location:  Best Western Plus Madison – Huntsville Hotel 9035 Madison Blvd, Hwy 20 West, Madison, AL 35824 (Formerly The Inn at Madison) Students receive software &… Read more

Modal Transient Analysis of a Beam with Enforced Motion via a Ramp Invariant Digital Recursive Filtering Relationship

These Matlab scripts calculate the natural frequencies of a beam via the finite element method:  beam_base_accel_fea.zip They also have options for base excitation: 1. frequency response function 2. half-sine base input 3. arbitrary base input A ramp invariant digital recursive relationship is used for the… Read more

HALT Testing

Question from one of my readers If equipment is normally isolated in service, should HALT vibration testing be performed with or without isolators since the intent of this testing is to find operational and structural limits regardless of the real environment. Answer from Steve Brenner… Read more

Damping Value Conversion Calculator

Here is a Matlab GUI script which converts between various damping metrics:  damping.zip The supported metric include: quality factor Q fraction of critical damping [zeta] loss factor [eta] 3 dB Bandwidth [delta omega] 3 dB Bandwidth [delta f] damping frequency [fd] decay constant [sigma] time… Read more