Software packages for vibrational transfer function evaluation?

[CalvinL]

I'm trying to vibrationally optimize a thermal braid for use in a temperature-regulated tomography stage. I've used Solidworks to find the minimal thermal specs for this braid but I don't see a way to model this braid vibrationally via FEA.

My current plan is to use a cone speaker to sweep a sine tone (~25Hz-500Hz) through the braid and use two accelerometers to capture its transfer function as a function of frequency--I've already tried broadband noise but SNR looks too low to be reliable. Can anybody recommend a software package that has a tone generator as well as two-channel analysis (to grab a spectrum at the vibration source and another at the downstream side of the braid)? I've looked into some low-cost FFT analyzers, but most look pretty unreliable and one of the two I tried had a downright math error in calculating the FFT.

I'm not very familiar with vibrometry but this operation seems like something that people do all the time, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Thanks.

 

[AX3L]

LabView from National Instruments is a great software for signal processing like FFT. It works well with their DAQs obviously and that seems to me like a good combo if you haven't that equipment already. MatLab and Simulink is my software of choice, but it's really expensive if you don't have it already and a bit overkill for your specific application I think. But if your company already have a license for it I can't find a reason to use another one.

 

[GregLocock]

If you don't have several tens of thousands of dollars hanging around then you might have more luck with

http://www.abravibe.com

than I have.

The specific issue you have created for yourself is that you want the input and output signals generated from the same device. I do not know enough about PC soundcards to know whether this is tricky.

It would of course be helpful to know which packages you have tried already.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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