Low Cycle Shock Fatigue

Some colleagues and I recently debated whether fatigue relationships could be applied to repetitive shock environments.  Each of us had a persuasive hypothesis as to whether fatigue was applicable, but none had any data to support his claim. I thus perform my own test at… Read more

Python Blog

With the encouragement of my NASA colleagues, I have started a Python Blog at: Vibrationdata Python Blog Please visit this site and contribute your own experience. Thank you, Tom Irvine

FreeMat Evaluation

FreeMat is an open-source software environment similar to Matlab. The latest version is 4.0, released 2009-10-09. I tried FreeMat with one of my Matlab scripts which prompts the user for keyboard input. Unfortunately, this resulted in an error: In /usr/local/share/FreeMat-4.0/toolbox/io/input.m(input) at line 37 In /home/jarle/freemat/inndata.m(inndata)… Read more

Python: reading two columns of numerical data with an arbitrary number of header & blank lines

Here is my current method. Please let me know if you have a better one. The input data may be either space, tab, or comma delimited. ########################################################################## import os import re from numpy import array,zeros,concatenate,linspace,std from sys import stdin import matplotlib.pyplot as plt ######################################################################## def… Read more

Python on Linux

I have installed Linux Ubuntu on my 64-bit Windows PC, turning it into a dual boot configuration. The link is:  http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer * * * I have also installed the Linux versions of Python & Spyder. Here is a Python installation method from Nick Smith: Part… Read more

Python Tip

Every Python book and website tutorial recommends the following command for prompting the user for input: raw_input() But I have found that this command is buggy and unreliable. Specifically, I wrote a long, complex code that had several raw_input() commands. The code ran successfully in… Read more