METHOD OF MEASURING VIBRATION ON A DEVICE

• US 20080000301A1
• Filed: 06/28/2006
• Published: 01/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sauer-Danfoss Incorporated (Danfoss A/S)
• Original Assignee: Sauer-Danfoss Incorporated (Danfoss A/S)
• Inventors: Davidson, Lincoln
• Granted Patent: US 7,578,193 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 73/654
• CPC Class Codes: B66F 17/003 for fork-lift trucks
• CPC Class Codes: G01H 1/00 Measuring characteristics of vibrations in solids by using direct conduction to the detector G01H9/00, G01H11/00 take precedence

Abstract

A method of measuring vibration on an operational device. The method includes providing an operational device with a control unit and a vibration sensor comprised of a three axis accelerometer, a digital signal processor, and a communications transceiver. The digital signal processor takes the raw vibration data for each axis of the three axis accelerometer and applies a weighting function to the vibration data for each individual axis. Then stress level data associated with the vehicle operator is used to calculate the instantaneous contributions of the filtered data to the stress level data of the operator to determine instantaneous stress level data that has accumulated over a fixed time interval. After the fixed time interval, the digital signal processor calculates an increase of the stress level of the operator during the time interval to create stress data that is transmitted through a communications transceiver for display.

Claims

1. A method of measuring vibration on an operational device steps comprising:

providing a vibration sensor comprised of a three axis accelerometer, a digital signal processor and a communications transceiver;

determining vibration data for each axis of the three axis accelerometer;

filtering the vibration data for each axis with a weighting function to create instantaneous stress data for each axis;

accumulating the instantaneous stress data to determine an accumulated strss level; and

transmitting the stress data through the communications transceiver.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the weighting function matches human sensitivity for the axis.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the accumulated stress level is transmitted to a processing device.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the accumulated stress level is transmitted to a storage device.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the stress data is transmitted to a display.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of separating the stress data into three series of non-overlapping blocks.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the stress data within each block is represented by a number.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the operational device is a vehicle.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the operational device is heavy equipment.

10. (canceled)