selectASET User Guide

OVERVIEW

The selectASET routine is a MATLAB-based program that helps select accelerometer locations for a modal vibration test. This process starts with a candidate set of potential accelerometer degrees of freedom (DOF) and iteratively removes the least-important DOF until the user-defined orthogonality error or number of DOF is achieved. This routine can accommodate multiple finite element model (FEM) configurations, selecting the best set of accelerometers for multi-configuration modal tests to minimize test setup time.

Several key features of the selectASET routine:

Direct Nastran compatibility—Nastran data can be generated for import into selectASET using standard Nastran cards, and the optimal accelerometer set can be written directly to Nastran ASET cards.

Works with multiple FEM configurations—selectASET can simultaneously select accelerometer locations on multiple FEM configurations to minimize setup time for multi-configuration modal tests.

Manual accelerometer location selection—The user can manually select accelerometer locations to improve mode shape visualization of test-display models.

Triaxial accelerometer selection—selectASET can operate on individual DOF or triaxial accelerometer locations.

Command line execution—selectASET can be run interactively through the graphical user interface (GUI) or can be executed from the command line, enabling scripting or batch execution.

GUI-driven operation—The GUI allows the user full control over the solution parameters and streamlines post processing and interrogation of results.

Error function formulation—selectASET uses industry-standard pseudo-orthogonality or self-orthogonality error metrics to rank the importance of each DOF/triaxial accelerometer.

Provides orthogonality error sensitivity feedback—selectASET stores intermediate results so the user can examine the sensitivity of the orthogonality error to changes in the number of accelerometers.

Interface with Microsoft Excel through XML—Orthogonality, modal assurance criterion (MAC), and frequency comparisons can be exported to Excel-compatible XML format to document results.