A user has three signals captured using a triaxial accelerometer and asked “What is the simplest way to get the XYZ resultant from run-up file?” He had tried forming a resultant of the raw time histories, but didn’t fully understand the resultant time history.
Of course, the correct way of processing the data is to calculate the individual waterfalls from the x, y & z data and then calculate a resultant waterfall.
The Calculate X,Y Z resultant module calculates the resultant modulus of the X,Y and Z input signals. It squares each value, sums them and takes the square root. Consequently the result is always positive (as it is a square root). So performing this analysis on time histories (with positive and negative amplitudes) gives you the modulus result which is always positive and looks completely different from the input time histories.
The example worksheet above does the following:
- Takes the dataset AutomotiveImpactStrip.dac from the examples\data\General Data folder
- Selects the signals Seat Track X, Seat Track Y and Seat Track Z. You can change it if you want to analyse other signals.
- Performs a waterfall on each of these
- Takes the 3 waterfall results and performs a resultant calculation on them.
- The result shows rms (square root of the sum of the squares) waterfall.
Click here to download the worksheet
Dr Mike Donegan
Latest posts by Dr Mike Donegan (see all)
- How Do I Measure Whole Body Vibration? - March 20, 2015
- Sampling and Filtering Data for ISO8041 Compliance and Human Body Vibration Data Weighting - July 10, 2014
- What is Auto Spectral Density? - March 12, 2014
