Noise and Vibration Analysis: Signal Analysis and Experimental Procedures

For the last few years I've been able to borrow this book from a local university library. This book is very rich in content - take a look at the table of contents - and the author, Anders Brandt, is obviously an expert in the fields of noise, vibration measurement, and the related analyses. He's also a very effective writer and communicator/teacher - I even got good advice from him with installing the companion software Abravibe that works as a toolbox within Matlab. A few days ago, I bought the Kindle version - it's an excellent rendition of the hardcopy book, since all of the equations and graphs show up correctly and the text's format adjustments work fine. This Kindle version may be the best example of how well a technical book can be made available electronically without any shortcomings found in some other e-books. Thank you Anders Brandt for writing such a valuable book for practitioners and students alike!

Really excellent book! A must have for any mechanical engineer diving into the field of (vibration signal analyses, processing and measurment).

An outstanding book. I highly recommend it.

Very good book for case studies in practical vibration problems.

Itis a true pleasure to review a good textbook on noise and vibration technology written by a Scandinavian author with a strong reputation as an excellent teacher. The book is well bound with 400+ pages of relevant content. It is accompanied by a downloadable toolbox and examples. The software is really ambitious with script variants for Matlab as well as the free Octave. It should be quite valuable for practicing engineers who may want to experiment with the influence of different signal processing parameters. Do we need another book covering test-based noise and vibration analysis and procedures? This book is aimed as comprehensive literature for university graduate courses on the subject and will also be a useful handbook for engineers and researchers measuring and analyzing noise and vibration signals. The first five chapters (115 pages) are introductory content necessary for a course book and probably well known to practicing experimentalists. Although this is basic content, Anders Brandt makes rather difficult theory easily understandable like the discussion on convolution in Chapter 2 or the thorough discussion in Chapter 3 on the fundamental properties of digital time data analysis. Although well known and subjects covered decades ago, I found those chapters very entertaining to read. A large part of the book treats measurement of frequency response functions and modal analysis. Theory of modal analysis is presented in Chapter 6, which is a well written and explained summary of the most important basics of modal analysis. It is a good introduction to experimental as well as computational modal analysis of dynamical systems with references to some classic textbooks. More advanced aspects of experimental modal analysis are saved to the last chapter of the book. Transducers are introduced in Chapter 7 including accelerometers, force transducers, the impedance head, the instrumented impact hammer and shakers. Principles as well as calibration and mounting of accelerometers are commented. It is when I read this chapter that I start to suspect that the book will cover more of vibration than acoustic (noise) analysis. Measurement microphones are treated in less than one page and I found the first minor detail where I disagree with the author which is the short note on calibration of microphones. Latest accredited calibration values should be used and the procedure presented in the book shall be used only to check the microphone calibration. The same applies to the use of portable, handheld accelerometer calibrators. Chapters 8-10 are a "must read" even if you think you know everything you need to know about the frequency analysis of signals. It starts ground up with the theory for periodic, random and transient signals and proceeds with a very thorough treatise on experimental, digital frequency analysis including DFT, FFT, leakage, the picket fence effect, time windows, corrections for applied windows, oversampling, circular convolution, aliasing and estimation of spectra and correlation functions in great detail. Again, the presentation is a good mix of practical consequences and theoretical details. Chapter 11 is a short, neutral discussion about commercial measurement and analysis systems and general specifications for good test systems. Chapter 12 treats rotating machinery analysis, and introduces the use of tachometers, order analysis and tracking including synchronous sampling, again easily understood. The Vold-Kalman filter method is shortly commented but the reader has to get more details from the references. Frequency response measurements are treated in Chapter 13 and 14, single-input and multiple-input respectively. This is one of the very strong and detailed parts of this book and fills 65 pages. The theory and practical measurement issues are comprehensively discussed and well illustrated both using impact hammer and shaker excitation. Chapter 15 introduces Principal Component Analysis as a technique to orthogonalize signals from different sources as well as their use for data reduction with a very nice and illustrative example of image compression by using only the largest principal components. Virtual signals and virtual coherence functions are introduced and typical use for noise source identification with an automotive example is given. The final Chapter 16, "Advanced Analysis Methods" includes short introductions to various subjects not treated previously, like shock response spectra, the Hilbert transform, Cepstrum analysis, the envelope spectrum, operating deflection shapes and a very short introduction to experimental modal analysis methods for the identification of modal parameters. I think it is a very good and up to date course book for advanced signal analysis and vibration measurement classes on graduate level. Maybe it is a bit too heavy for undergraduate courses. It is of course also well suited as a textbook for advanced, comprehensive courses for practicing engineers. It is also good reading for everyone that makes this type of measurements professionally. Do I miss anything essential? Well, I think it is the special analysis techniques and procedures that are used in acoustics. An acoustic cavity (e.g. a room) is typically a dynamic system with many overlapping modes already at relatively low frequencies. The high generic variability of detailed system properties like e.g. frequency response functions was realized by acousticians already in the 1950's and has to be understood also today especially when properties of ensembles of "identical" objects are needed. This inherent uncertainty seems not to be well known among practicing engineers, especially those who entered the NVH field with a structural dynamics background. The book may eventually be disappointing for a reader who is more interested in noise issues than in vibration analysis. Hopefully this void can be filled in a future edition of this very good book. Juha Plunt PhD, Principal Specialist, Müller-BBM Scandinavia AB

Clear and consise. One of the best books in this area, and I know many of then.