Piezoelectric Shaker Development for High Frequency Calibration of Accelerometers
- National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8220, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8220 (United States)
Calibration of vibration transducers requires sinusoidal motion over a wide frequency range with low distortion and low cross-axial motion. Piezoelectric shakers are well suited to generate such motion and are suitable for use with laser interferometric methods at frequencies of 3 kHz and above. An advantage of piezoelectric shakers is the higher achievable accelerations and displacement amplitudes as compared to electro-dynamic (ED) shakers. Typical commercial ED calibration shakers produce maximum accelerations from 100 m/s{sup 2} to 500 m/s{sup 2}. Very large ED shakers may produce somewhat higher accelerations but require large amplifiers and expensive cooling systems to dissipate heat. Due to the limitations in maximum accelerations by ED shakers at frequencies above 5 kHz, the amplitudes of the generated sinusoidal displacement are frequently below the resolution of laser interferometers used in primary calibration methods. This limits the usefulness of ED shakers in interferometric based calibrations at higher frequencies.Small piezoelectric shakers provide much higher acceleration and displacement amplitudes for frequencies above 5 kHz, making these shakers very useful for accelerometer calibrations employing laser interferometric measurements, as will be shown in this paper. These piezoelectric shakers have been developed and used at NIST for many years for high frequency calibration of accelerometers. This paper documents the construction and performance of a new version of these shakers developed at NIST for the calibration of accelerometers over the range of 3 kHz to 30 kHz and possibly higher. Examples of typical calibration results are also given.
- OSTI ID:
- 21366752
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1253, Issue 1; Conference: 9. international conference on vibrational measurements by laser and non-contact techniques and short course, Ancona (Italy), 22-25 Jun 2010; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3455479; (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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