Survey of Excitation Techniques Applicable to the Testing of Automotive Structures

With the implementation of digital signal processing, frequency response measurements are not limited to swept sine testing. With the discrete Fourier Transform, any physically realizable signal can be used for excitation.

The best technique depends on the application, available equipment, the presence of measurement noise, the linearity of the test object, and the time available in which to execute the test. In this paper a number of excitation techniques have been described. All of these techniques have advantages and disadvantages which have been described in the text of this paper.