what to make of accelerometer data???

[wkisiel]

My collegues and I place vision systems inside large vibrating machines. recently, we used an accelerometer, mounted at several points on our equipment, to gather vibration data. We know have several graphs of acceleration (g's) vs time (sec) for the x-y-z axis. Ultimately we would like to lessen the amount of vibration to our cameras. How can I use this found data to help with the solution.

Thank you very much for your time and response to any replies.

 

[GregLocock]

Well, normally you would turn it into frequency spectra, by FFTing it, identify the large peaks, then try and make them smaller. If that sounds like gobbledygook then you could learn to analyse them youself

Look in the FAQ section for a list of useful web sites that give an introduction to signal analysis.

An alternative is to send the zipped time series data to me, with details of the calibration etc. greglocock at optusnet dot com dot au

I'll FFT them and give you some suggestions.



Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[jeyaselvan]

You can convert those data from time domain into frequency domain very easily. You can even do the same in MS EXCEL. Thereafter you try to locate the peaks and then try to corrlte with your system. Suitable modification therafter may help you in bringing down the vibration level.
Let me know if you need any further help on this

Jeyaselvan

 

[JDLME]

I did an FFT transform using MathCAD and Excel and the results were remarkable different. I never did figure out which one was correct. However, the Excel program was behaving in a strange way which leads me to believe the MathCAD program was more correct. Excel will not perform the calculation until the file is saved if the file gets to be too big.

 

[anands78]

MathCAD has a Caps "FFT" and a small "fft" function. THe help files say that the difference between the two is because of the difference in the way you define the function with either a +ve exponent or a -ve exponent. Ive not been able to understand this, but I heard from someone that for discrete data the capital FFT command has to be used.