Accelerometer identification using shock excitation

A signal processing method for identifying the input-output behavior of accelerometers is developed. The method is based on the state-space description of the relationship between input, noise and output signals. The accelerometer is modeled as a one-degree-of-freedom system. The acceleration input signal is derived from the interferometrically measured displacement signal by a subroutine for the low-noise estimate of the input acceleration. For observed sequences of input-output data, the parameters of the transfer function of the accelerometer are estimated by minimizing the prediction error sequence of the state-space model. The identification procedure developed was applied to accelerometer input-output data with peak values ranging from about 10(4) to 5 x 10(4) m/s(2) furnished by a shock acceleration standard device. The estimated transfer function characterizes the input-output behavior of the accelerometer in the time and frequency domain and allows to determine the acceleration output signals for non-stationary input signals, for example, the peak values in primary shock calibrations. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.