RINEX 3.02

Do I Need to do a Vibration Dampening?

Purpose: To provide insight into vibration dampening. This is only a recommendation by Inertial Labs. It is ultimately up to the user to decide for his/herself what the best solution is for their system.
Last Updated: October 2019

Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are crucial in various applications, particularly in Inertial Navigation Systems (INS), where accurate data is essential for reliable performance. Understanding how to manage and mitigate these vibrations is critical to maintaining high-quality, reliable output from the INS.

Vibration dampening is a valuable concern when using Inertial Measurement Units (IMU). This is due to excess vibrations that can saturate data output streams from the Inertial Navigation System (INS). A good rule of thumb for units that utilize the 15g tri-axial accelerometers is to mitigate vibrations that average larger than 4g’s Root Mean Square (RMS) acceleration. As previously stated, this will prevent data from being saturated and less desirable for navigation.

A good way to analyze what kind of vibrations the INS will experience on a test platform is to configure the INS in the Graphical User Interface (GUI) to output high-frequency IMU data over one of its designated communication ports and log the data. This high-frequency IMU data (logged at 2kHz) can then be used to build and plot a vibration spectrum to see all vibration frequencies that could affect the INS.

Managing excessive vibrations is essential to ensure optimal performance of your INS and avoid data saturation. By analyzing high-frequency IMU data and utilizing available support resources from Inertial Labs, users can prevent issues and maintain the accuracy of their system. 

The Inertial Labs support team is on standby to help support customers with excessive vibration issues. Whether recommending a solution or helping to analyze data, we are eager to help with problems that may arise when integrating a solution. Raise a support ticket or search for related issues in our Support Portal.

For any additional questions, please email support@inertiallabs.com

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