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Displacement, m
in Figure 1. The simplest musical tones are sine waves at particular
frequencies. More complicated musical sounds arise from over- 0
laying sine waves of different frequencies at the same time. Sine
waves are important in more areas than music. Every structure can –0.5
vibrate and has particular frequencies (resonance frequencies) in
which it vibrates with the greatest amplitude. Therefore sinusoidal
–1.0
vibration testing is important to help understand how any structure
vibrates naturally.
–1.5
The vibration testing industry has made good use of sine vibra-
tions to help assess the frequencies at which a particular device
–2.0
under test (DUT) resonates. These frequencies are important to 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0
the vibration testing engineer, because they are the frequencies at Time, sec
which the DUT vibrates with the greatest amplitude and, therefore,
Figure 1. Time history of a sinusoidal waveform. Note its repeatability and
may be the most harmful to the DUT. predictability.
Because “real-world” vibrations are not sinusoidal, sine testing
has a limited place in the vibration testing industry. Part of the 2.5
usefulness of sine testing is its simplicity, so it’s a good point of
entry into the study of vibrations. 2.0 Chicago Dr., Real Data: 080205
10–1
Probability Density
10–2
10–3
10–41
100
10–1
Probability Density
10–2
10–3
10–4
References
1. Tustin, Wayne, Random Vibration & Shock Testing, Equipment Reliability
Probability Density
Institute, Santa Barbara, CA, 2005. 10–2
2. Connon, W. H., “Comments on Kurtosis of Military Vehicle Vibration
Data,” Journal of the Institute of Environmental Sciences, September/
October 1991, pp. 38-41.
3. Van Baren, Philip D., System and Method for Simultaneously Control- 10–3
ling Spectrum and Kurtosis of a Random Vibration, US Patent Office
#7,426,426 B2.
10–5
–8 –6 –4 –2 0 2 4 6 8
Multiple of Sigma
Figure 10. A comparison of kurtosis values 3 and 7. Note how the higher
kurtosis value includes higher peak accelerations.