Structural Design—Vibrations

Summary

This chapter shows that the effects of the typical amplitudes can be reduced with appropriate optomechanical systems engineering. Depending on the frequency, vibrations applied to an optical system can deflect the system more than the static deflections. There are two types of vibrations that are common: sinusoidal or “sine sweep” and random. While sinusoidal vibrations consist of mostly a single frequency, random vibrations contain a collection of many different sinusoids of varying amplitude and frequency. For optomechanical systems consisting of structural elements such as beams and plates, the number of springs and masses is no longer one or two, but essentially infinite ‐ such systems are called continuous systems. As is the case with structural design principles for static loading, the specific stiffness plays an important role in dynamic loading. It is not always possible to remove the effects of vibrations with structural stiffening, damping, or balancing.