Moment excitation and the measurement of moment mobilities

Frequency response functions (FRF), such as mobilities, are widely used in the analysis of vibration and structure-borne sound and it is important that this FRF data can be measured accurately for all important degrees of freedom. In some cases three translational and three rotational components of both excitation and response may be of importance; i.e. three forces and moments, and three velocities and angular velocities. Of these, the measurement of angular velocity due to moment excitation is one of the most challenging. This paper describes a known approach, sometimes referred to as the central difference method, which can be used for this purpose. The central difference method is thought to be one of the most practicable methods for measuring moment mobilities because it avoids the need for a moment exciter; instead finite differences are used to approximate the moment mobility which is a spatial derivative of the more easily measured velocity to force mobility ratio. There does however remain some doubt regarding the accuracy of the central difference method because of the finite difference approximation made and the method's possible susceptibility to random and bias errors. To better understand the finite difference error, an error analysis using a Taylor series expansion and simulated experiments for plate and beam structures are provided. It is then argued that random and bias errors associated with the measurement chain should now, with modern instrumentation, be less of a problem. An experimental validation of the method using two approaches is used to test this hypothesis. It is concluded that the central difference method provides a good balance between measurement effort and data quality making it widely applicable.