Page 6 - Shock and Vibration Overview

Shock & Vibration Measurement

and vibration levels in your environment to get started in the design process or if
you’re trying to satisfy a curiosity, lower quality systems may be adequate. There are
other applications, such as health monitoring, that aren’t necessarily looking for
absolute vibration values. Rather, relative vibration levels and how it changes with
time is important.

4) Where is the test environment?
Will this be in the lab or in the field? If testing will be limited only to the lab then
more complicated test equipment can be used. Conversely though, if the testing is
done in the field, ease-of-use will be a driver of your hardware selection. The type of
environment will also heavily influence sensor selection such as temperature range,
humidity, electromagnetic noise; and even corrosive or radioactive conditions.

5) When is the test date?
All too often engineers realize they need testing once a problem has already
presented itself. Lead time of equipment now becomes incredibly important
especially because they can have 6 to 8 week lead times. Often times the engineer

won’t have that time available to wait.

6) When will the vibration analysis need to be completed?
This may drive your software selection. If you have a limited time to perform the
analysis you may want to go the route of simpler and cheaper software packages to

give you that quicker overview of the data. On the other hand if you have a
development effort that has a heavy emphasis on analysis and the time available to
support that analysis effort then a more complex software package may be
warranted. Along that same vein, it may be worthwhile to use a programming
language like MATLAB or Python to develop your own analysis scripts specific to your
analysis needs.

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