Vibration
In mechanics, vibration is oscillatory motion about an equilibrium point. Vibration may be deterministic if the oscillations can be characterised precisely, or random if the oscillations can only be analysed statistically.
Vibration can be desirable: for example, the motion of a tuning fork, the reed in a woodwind instrument or harmonica, a mobile phone, or the cone of a loudspeaker.
In many cases, however, vibration is undesirable, wasting energy and creating unwanted sound. For example, the vibrational motions of engines, electric motors, or any mechanical device in operation are typically unwanted. Such vibrations could be caused by imbalances in the rotating parts, uneven friction, or the meshing of gear teeth. Careful designs usually minimize unwanted vibrations.
The studies of sound and vibration are closely related. Sound, or pressure waves, are generated by vibrating structures ; these pressure waves can also induce the vibration of structures. Hence, attempts to reduce noise are often related to issues of vibration.
Machining vibrations are common in the process of subtractive manufacturing.
Types
Free vibration or natural vibration occurs when a mechanical system is set in motion with an initial input and allowed to vibrate freely. Examples of this type of vibration are pulling a child back on a swing and letting it go, or hitting a tuning fork and letting it ring. The mechanical system vibrates at one or more of its natural frequencies and damps down to motionlessness.Forced vibration is when a time-varying disturbance is applied to a mechanical system. The disturbance can be a periodic and steady-state input, a transient input, or a random input. The periodic input can be a harmonic or a non-harmonic disturbance. Examples of these types of vibration include a washing machine shaking due to an imbalance, transportation vibration caused by an engine or uneven road, or the vibration of a building during an earthquake. For linear systems, the frequency of the steady-state vibration response resulting from the application of a periodic, harmonic input is equal to the frequency of the applied force or motion, with the response magnitude being dependent on the actual mechanical system.
Damped vibration: When the energy of a vibrating system is gradually dissipated by friction and other resistances, the vibrations are said to be damped. The vibrations gradually reduce or change in frequency or intensity or cease and the system rests in its equilibrium position. An example of this type of vibration is the vehicular suspension dampened by the shock absorber.
Isolation
Testing
Vibration testing is accomplished by introducing a forcing function into a structure, usually with some type of shaker. Alternately, a DUT is attached to the "table" of a shaker. Vibration testing is performed to examine the response of a device under test to a defined vibration environment. The measured response may be ability to function in the vibration environment, fatigue life, resonant frequencies or squeak and rattle sound output. Squeak and rattle testing is performed with a special type of quiet shaker that produces very low sound levels while under operation.For relatively low frequency forcing, servohydraulic shakers are used. For higher frequencies, electrodynamic shakers are used. Generally, one or more "input" or "control" points located on the DUT-side of a vibration fixture is kept at a specified acceleration. Other "response" points may experience higher vibration levels or lower vibration level than the control point. It is often desirable to achieve anti-resonance to keep a system from becoming too noisy, or to reduce strain on certain parts due to vibration modes caused by specific vibration frequencies.
The most common types of vibration testing services conducted by vibration test labs are sinusoidal and random. Sine tests are performed to survey the structural response of the device under test. During the early history of vibration testing, vibration machine controllers were limited only to controlling sine motion so only sine testing was performed. Later, more sophisticated analog and then digital controllers were able to provide random control. A random test is generally considered to more closely replicate a real world environment, such as road inputs to a moving automobile.
Most vibration testing is conducted in a 'single DUT axis' at a time, even though most real-world vibration occurs in various axes simultaneously. MIL-STD-810G, released in late 2008, Test Method 527, calls for multiple exciter testing. The vibration test fixture used to attach the DUT to the shaker table must be designed for the frequency range of the vibration test spectrum. It is difficult to design a vibration test fixture which duplicates the dynamic response of the actual in-use mounting. For this reason, to ensure repeatability between vibration tests, vibration fixtures are designed to be resonance free within the test frequency range.
Generally for smaller fixtures and lower frequency ranges, the designer can target a fixture design that is free of resonances in the test frequency range. This becomes more difficult as the DUT gets larger and as the test frequency increases. In these cases multi-point control strategies can mitigate some of the resonances that may be present in the future.
Some vibration test methods limit the amount of crosstalk permitted to be exhibited by the vibration test fixture.
Devices specifically designed to trace or record vibrations are called vibroscopes.
Analysis
Vibration analysis, applied in an industrial or maintenance environment aims to reduce maintenance costs and equipment downtime by detecting equipment faults. VA is a key component of a condition monitoring program, and is often referred to as predictive maintenance. Most commonly VA is used to detect faults in rotating equipment such as imbalance, misalignment, rolling element bearing faults and resonance conditions.VA can use the units of Displacement, Velocity and Acceleration displayed as a time waveform, but most commonly the spectrum is used, derived from a fast Fourier transform of the TWF. The vibration spectrum provides important frequency information that can pinpoint the faulty component.
The fundamentals of vibration analysis can be understood by studying the simple Mass-spring-damper model. Indeed, even a complex structure such as an automobile body can be modeled as a "summation" of simple mass–spring–damper models. The mass–spring–damper model is an example of a simple harmonic oscillator. The mathematics used to describe its behavior is identical to other simple harmonic oscillators such as the RLC circuit.
Note: This article does not include the step-by-step mathematical derivations, but focuses on major vibration analysis equations and concepts. Please refer to the references at the end of the article for detailed derivations.
Free vibration without damping
To start the investigation of the mass–spring–damper assume the damping is negligible and that there is no external force applied to the mass. The force applied to the mass by the spring is proportional to the amount the spring is stretched "x". The proportionality constant, k, is the stiffness of the spring and has units of force/distance. The negative sign indicates that the force is always opposing the motion of the mass attached to it:The force generated by the mass is proportional to the acceleration of the mass as given by Newton's second law of motion:
The sum of the forces on the mass then generates this ordinary differential equation:
Assuming that the initiation of vibration begins by stretching the spring by the distance of A and releasing, the solution to the above equation that describes the motion of mass is:
This solution says that it will oscillate with simple harmonic motion that has an amplitude of A and a frequency of fn. The number fn is called the undamped natural frequency. For the simple mass–spring system, fn is defined as:
Note: angular frequency ω with the units of radians per second is often used in equations because it simplifies the equations, but is normally converted to ordinary frequency when stating the frequency of a system. If the mass and stiffness of the system is known, the formula above can determine the frequency at which the system vibrates once set in motion by an initial disturbance. Every vibrating system has one or more natural frequencies that it vibrates at once disturbed. This simple relation can be used to understand in general what happens to a more complex system once we add mass or stiffness. For example, the above formula explains why, when a car or truck is fully loaded, the suspension feels "softer" than unloaded—the mass has increased, reducing the natural frequency of the system.