Abstract:
Measuring tilt and vibration are two of the
major applications of accelerometers. An
experimental method to calibrate a commercially
available 2D accelerometer (ADXL202JQC) as
a tilt and a vibration measuring device is discus
sed in this publication. Calibration of tilt
measurements (measuring acceleration due to th
e gravity - the static case) was done by
rotating the accelerometer in a vertical plane. Also
the effect of minor inclinations of the plane
rotation of this experiment was investigated and observed to be minute. Based on the
calibration for the static case, the accelerometer
was tested in a dynamic case. A known type of
motion; the motion of a tip of a cantilever, was us
ed to test the calibration of the accelerometer
for the dynamic case. Motion of the tip of a cant
ilever was considered as a damping oscillation
thus the variation of acceleration of the
tip of the cantilever was considered a decaying
sinusoidal. The measurements obtained through accelerometer agreed to this proposed model
with R
2
values in the range of 0.93
to 0.98. The frequency of osc
illation of the cantilever was
varied by changing the length of the cantilever.
The periods of oscillation obtained by the
accelerometer agreed with the same values obtained from a stroboscope to maximum
percentage deviation of approximately 3%.
