A new method for processing impact excited continuous-scan laser Doppler vibrometer measurements

A scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) can acquire non-contact vibration measurements from a structure with high spatial detail in an automated manner; one only need redirect the laser via computer-controlled mirrors to acquire measurements at additional points. However, since most LDV systems are only capable of measuring one point at a time, conventional scanning vibrometry cannot be effectively employed in some situations, for example when the time record is long at each measurement point or when the structure changes with time. Conventional scanning LDV systems are also difficult to employ with impact excitation because there is considerable variation in the impact location, angle and the character of the impacts, which leads to errors in the mode shapes that are extracted from the measurements. This paper presents a method by which one can determine the mode shapes, natural frequencies and damping ratios of a structure from as little as one response record by sweeping the laser continuously over the vibrating structure as the measurement is acquired. A novel resampling approach is presented that transforms the continuous-scan measurements into pseudo-frequency response functions, so they can be processed using standard identification routines to find the modal parameters of the structure. Specifically, this work employs a standard multi-input–multi-output identification routine and the complex mode indicator function to the continuous-scan laser Doppler vibrometry (CSLDV) measurements. The method makes no assumptions regarding the shape or properties of the surface and only requires that the laser scan periodically and that the structure vibrate freely. The method is demonstrated experimentally on a free–free beam, identifying the first nine mode shapes of the beam at hundreds of points from a few time histories. For this system, this represents a two-order of magnitude reduction in the time needed to acquire measurements with the LDV.