DEVELOPMENT OF A HARDWARE/SOFTWARE FILTERING SYSTEM FOR DISPLACEMENT/ACCELERATION RESPONSE OF A 2ND ORDER DYNAMIC SYSTEM

The numerical processing (integration/differentiation) of measured displacement and acceleration data can often be plagued with a variety of measurement problems. Drift, bias, offset, electrical noise and random effects can wreck havoc on the processing of data. In order to minimize these effects, a variety of different filtering schemes can be employed. A student-designed measurement system that integrates the salient features of first order filtering systems is used to extend the student’s knowledge on filtering. The students design hardware and software modules to provide filtering to minimize effects that distort the numerical integration/differentiation of the measured signals. Example signals are filtered using analog hardware filtering as well as MATLAB and Labview software tools with graphical user interface to assist in the fine tuning of the filter characteristics.