Determination of Excitation Locations in Modal Survey Testing - Final Report - ESTEC Contract No. 7509/87/NL/PH.

Abstract

Present modal survey test techniques suffer under the absence of a criterion for optimal exciter placement. Based on combinatorical optimization in combination with the condition number of the modal matrix of potential exciter points, a technique for optimal exciter point selection was developed. The a priori information on the normal mode parameters, required for these calculations, is determined by means of indicator function information and a difference criterion for the structural deformations. Tests on an analytical eleven-degree-of-freedom system, as well as a modal survey test on the real satellite model SIMOD, verify the performance of the proposed technique.