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Lab Room | Apparatus Map | Accelerometer | Frequency Response

Frequency Response

Most often, accelerometers will be measuring the dynamic characteristics of an object undergoing time-varying acceleration. Hence, we need to be concerned with their frequency response.

Since complex waveforms can be represented as a series of sines or cosines, we can study the response of the accelerometer to a periodic input to determine its frequency response. Therefore, let the object to which the accelerometer is attached undergo the following displacement:

 (1)           

By differentiating Equation 1 twice with respect to time, the accelerometer's housing experiences an acceleration of:

(2)           

Recalling Equation 2 from the Theory of Operation and substitiuting Equation 2 from above, the governing equation of the primary transducer within the accelerometer is:

(3)       

It can be shown that the solution to Equation 3 is given by:

     
(4)     

where the amplitude response, C', is given by:

(5)      
and the phase response, [[phi]], is given by:
(6)          

Last Updated: January 16, 2000, beam@bits.me.berkeley.edu
Copyright © 1993-1995, 2000, Pamela A. Eibeck and Brandon Muramatsu
Original WWW Conversion by Winston Wang, 1994
WWW ReConversion by Brandon Muramtasu, 2000