Fakultas Teknik (Fatek) currently has obtained several up-to-date devices used for mechanical vibration research. The devices were obtained through purchasing of new laboratory equipments which is aimed to improve the quality of teaching and research within the faculty.
The devices obtained consist of two NI USB-6255 National Instruments (NI) data acquisition devices. Each unit of NI USB-6255 is capable to be used as analogue-digital input-output data acquisition with a sampling rate of up to 1.25 Ms/s (Million sampling rate per second). There are also nine PCB piezo-electric accelerometers purchased to be used in mechanical vibration signal measurement. These accelerometer units are equipped with two signal conditioners units and several sets of thermal-proof connectors.
In addition of the two above mentioned units. The data acquisitions devices were driven using a 13 inch Retina MacbookPro notebook installed with Matlab. The Matlab software is used to control and drive the device which is connected via USB port. The set of mechanical vibration research equipment is also added with a mechanical vibration test rig that can be used for simulating several mechanical failures in rotating machineries. This mechanical vibration test rig is also can be used to simulating shaft unbalance condition that in real world installation would generate unwanted mechanical vibration.The arrangement for an experimental purpose by using purchased equipments will consist of a connection of the PCB accelerometers via the signal conditioner units, then the output of signal conditioner units will be connected to analogue input terminals of the NI USB-6255 units. The NI USB-6255 unit in turn will be connected to MacbookPro notebook via a USB connection. The data acquisition session will be managed and controlled by using a tailored Matlab scripts. Once the script is running, Matlab will command the NI-6255 unit to start acquiring vibration data. The vibration data is then transferred via USB cable to the notebook, processed and store in the hard drive. Later, the saved vibration data is then can be processed using several digital signal processing techniques such as using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), various filtering algorithms, Wavelet Transform, etc.
All of these devices would enhance the teaching process and research projects at the Engineering Department of Fakultas Teknik Universitas Pattimura.