Monographs

To place an order for one of the monographs, please contact Ashley Shumaker at (434) 581-3041. 
Mastercard, Visa, American Express, and checks are acceptable forms of payment.

Robert H. Cole
Published: 1948, 1965, 2007

Taken from Underwater Explosions Preface (1948) - "The content and purpose of this book are largely the result of research on underwater explosions carried out by many groups in the years 1941-46.  Much of the present knowledge and understanding of this field was acquired because of the demands of these war years and the few available discussions on the subject have become inadequate or obsolete.  This book is an attempt to supply a reasonably comprehensive account which will be of use both to workers in the field of underwater explosions and to others interested in the basic physical processes involved.

This classic work was reprinted under SAVIAC in late 2007 under permission granted by Professor John Berberian (St. Joseph's University) representing the estate of Robert Cole.  

Price: $95.00

Rudolph J. Scavuzzo and Henry C. Pusey
Published: 2000, 2002, 2004, 2007
ISBN No. 0-9646940-4-2

The objective if this monograph is to present the analytical methods and experimental tools used to shockproof naval equipment on combatants.  The monograph is divided into five chapters: Chapter 1 - Introduction and Shock Test Machines and Vehicles, Chapter 2 - Normal Mode Theory, Chapter 3 - US Navy Dynamic Design Analysis Method (DDAM), Chapter 4 - Time-History Shock Analyses, and Chapter 5 - Shock Analysis in the Plastic Regime.

Price: $70.00

Rudolph J. Scavuzzo and Henry C. Pusey
Published: 1996
ISBN No. 0-9646940-3-4

This monograph is a modification of the first edition of Principles and Techniques of Shock Data Analysis, authored by Ronald D. Kelly and George Richman, and originally published in 1969 by he Shock and Vibration Information Center (SVIC). There have been many changes in shock and vibration signal processing technology since the late 1960's: finite element software has been developed, the personal computer was introduced, modal testing developed, and analog to digital conversion made simple. PC software such as MATLAB® that containes signal processing algorithms and spreadsheets used in data collection and processing has revolutionized the manner in which shock data is analyzed and interpreted. The basic principles are the same but with the power of computation, available software and new hardware, the need for detailed mathematical approaches emphasized in the first edition are no longer required in engineering practice. Only the meaning  and physical significance of each approach to data analysis must be understood.

Price: $50.00

Henry C. Pusey
Published: 1996
ISBN No. 0-9646940-2-6

Published to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Shock and Vibration Symposium, this book covers the evolution of shock and vibration technology over the past 50 years. Separate chapters cover the achievements and contributions of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Defense Special Weapons Agency, the National Laboratories, NASA, industry, and professional societies. Also included is the history of the Shock and Vibration Symposium.

Price:    $40.00

Michael T. Freeman
Published: 1996
ISBN No. 0-9646940-1-8

Throughout the fifty years following the end of World War II, many individuals have written retrospective views on the subject of dynamic and environmental testing. Most have focused on significant equipment developments and technology advances in the field, but few have ever focused on the individuals who made these progressions possible -- the pioneers.

Price:    $30.00

Edited by Walter and Barbara Pilkey, University of Virginia
Published: 1995
ISBN No. 0-9646940-0-1

Shock and Vibration Computer Programs is an updated version of the classic book edited by Walter and Barbara Pilkey and published in 1975 as SVM-10 by the Shock and Vibration Information Center (SVIC). This edition, SVM-13, is published by the Shock and Vibration Information Analysis Center (SAVIAC) under contract to the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA).

The book is divided into two parts. In Part I, the authors include computer programs suitable for particular classes of problems. In part II, capabilities and routines within programs are discussed. This work required collecting information on available programs, critically reviewing the program's descriptive material and documentation, and verifying sources of availability. Walter and Barbara Pilkey have again shown their expertise in the field of shock and vibration in compiling a volume of computer programs guaranteed to be a valuable source of information for many years to come.

Price:    $70.00

Neville F. Rieger
Published: 1986

This monograph has been written to meet the need for a comprehensive treatise on the balancing of rotating equipment. The subject of rotor balancing is a broad topic which involves many skills and disciplines. It has recently evolved from what was previously a mechanical engineering operation into an electromechanical technology. This has resulted from the intensive application of the minicomputer to coordinate the required balancing operation. Indeed, the entire subject of rotor balancing has recently experienced an era of growth and development in which technological changes have occurred in many fundamental areas. These changes have resulted from balancing requirements associated with the rapid development of advanced high-speed rotating machinery during the two previous decades. The continued demand for greater power output per unit weight in rotating equi9pment has led to the acceptance of more flexible rotor balancing techniques. These techniques and the associated equipment are now being used to balance advanced, flexible rotor equipment, and they are also replacing the older, established rigid rotor balancing procedures.

In use, this book is directed toward the professional engineer with no significant prior experiences in rotor balancing. It is hoped that such engineers may obtain from it an introduction to the principles of balancing, certain basic balancing procedure, and some acquaintance with the hardware involved in rotor balancing. Sufficient advanced material has been included so that further in-depth study may be conveniently pursued on specific state-of-the-art topics using the literature sources specified at the end of each chapter.

Price: $50.00 (available as bound photocopy only)

Raymond R. Bouche
Published: 1979

While working on primary vibration standards in the early 1950's, we were frequently visited by engineers from various parts of the United States and other countries. These engineers came to visit us at the National Bureau Standards with a common purpose. They simply wanted to unravel the mystery o9f obtaining reasonable accuracy while calibrating accelerometers and other vibration measuring instruments. A common problem was that engineers and technicians would obtain different calibration results with errors sometimes greatly exceeding 10 percent. Fortunately, with a few years of effort it was possible to reduce calibration errors by more than an order of magnitude. This was accomplished b y performing the absolute reciprocity calibrations on primary vibration standards. Thereafter, it was still a problem for some laboratories to obtain good accuracy when performing calibrations. This problem had to do with certain shortcomings with calibration instruments as well as a lack of familiarity with the performance characteristics of accelerometers and how these characteristics might produce errors due to poor motion in the calibration shakers.

It helps to be familiar with the performance characteristic of accelerometers and vibration instruments. This is one of the goals of this monograph, i.e. to describe the vibration instruments in detail to provide the engineer with information to use when doing calibration work. However, this need to be familiar with accelerometer performance characteristics is minimized by using high-quality calibration shakers and high-quality standard accelerometers. Fortunately, after about 25 years of effort at the National Bureau Standards and at leading commercial laboratories, these high quality shakers and high-quality, primary vibration standards are now available.

Price: $25.00 (available as bound photocopy only)

Edited by Walter and Barbara Pilkey
Published: 1975

The increasing importance of computer programs to the shock and vibration community underscores the need to gather together program capability and dissemination information. This book contains critical reviews and summaries of available shock and vibration computer programs. It is hoped that this book will be a valuable tool to readers for use in selecting the best software to solve their problems.

The book is divided into two sections. In the first section, computer programs suitable for particular classes of problems are considered. Both special purpose and general purpose programs are included. In all cases, considerable care has been given to providing details of availability of the programs.

In the second section of the book, the capabilities of readily available general purpose programs are treated. The methods used for solving dynamics problems are outlined and the techniques employed for incorporating various material properties are scrutinized. Finally, we attempt to discern which programs are the most appropriate for particular problems.

Price: $25.00 (available as bound photocopy only)

Warren C. Fackler
Published: 1972

The purpose of this monograph is to present a critical review of those equivalence techniques which have been and are being used to define and simulate service vibration environments in the testing laboratory. A further objective of the monograph is to present a unified and current overview of the heretofore fragmented activities involved in the formulation of vibration equivalence methods.

Price: $25.00 (available as bound photocopy only)

Allen J. Curtis, Nickolas G. Tinling and Henry T. Abstein, Jr.
Published: 1971

Vibration testing is a rapidly evolving technology that has gained widespread recognition of its importance mostly in the period since World War II. As often happens in a new and rapid technological development, vibration testing has been beset by unclear, conflicting, and sometimes controversial concepts of test specifications, test conditions, test methods, and interpretation of test results.

In this monograph, the authors have done a great service by compiling the state-of-the-art knowledge of vibration testing and related technology in a very clear, concise, and comprehensive manner. The various test methods are described and explained in a factual way so that the reader can easily assimilate the essential concepts and then use his own engineering judgment in applying them to the problem at hand. Nevertheless, the authors do not hesitate to express their own opinions and judgments in a scientific manner, and these provide authoritative precepts which can be very helpful in guiding the practitioner.

The designer and specification writer will find helpful explanations and background in Chapter 2, "Selection of Appropriate Test Method." These people often are not vibration specialists, but this chapter will help them acquire an understanding that will increase their effectiveness in incorporating suitable provisions for vibration in their designs and specifications.

Chapter 3, "Simulation Characteristics of Test Methods," will be especially useful to those who have had difficulty in understanding the basic features of the various vibration test methods. This chapter clearly delineates each method and with a minimal amount of mathematics summaries the analytical basis of each.

The test conductor will be concerned primarily with Chapters 4 and 5. Much of the practical information needed to conduct a vibration test is given in these chapters, including many helpful hints which have been acquired through the experience and mistakes of others.

The authors conclude with a summary in Chapter 6 of how vibration data are acquired and handled. And so this monograph gives the vibration testing technologist a reference that systematically reviews and explains how vibration data are acquired, how the data are used in preparing specifications, how a test is conducted to satisfy specifications, and how test results are interpreted.

This monograph should help those working with vibration problems, and particularly the novice, to come to a clearer understanding of the basis, concepts, and purposed of vibration testing, and it will be much appreciated by those who desire to see how the technology fits together to make good sense.

Price: $25.00

Jerome E. Ruzicka and Thomas F. Derby
Published: 1971

This monograph is concerned with the influence of damping on the performance of passive vibration isolation systems subjected to harmonic vibration excitation. To focus attention on isolator damping characteristics, consideration is limited to an idealized vibration isolation system in the form of a rigid mass connected to a rigid foundation by an isolator having linear stiffness characteristics and a wide range of linear and nonlinear damping characteristics. The rigid mass is constrained so that only translational vibration occurs. However, by appropriate definition of system parameters, the results may be applied directly to unidirectional vibration isolation systems experiencing rotational vibrations.

While this monograph has been prepared in the language of the vibration control engineer, the results should have much wider application in the related fields of machine design, structural mechanics, acoustics, and electronics. It is the hope of the authors that this monograph will be of use to analysts, designers, and experimentalists concerned with these technologies.

Price: $25.00

Eugene Sevin and Walter D. Pilkey
Published: 1971

This monograph deals with contemporary approaches to the problem of optimum shock and vibration isolation design. Isolation devices act to reduce the unwanted effects of shock and vibration disturbances on critical elements of a mechanical system. The problem of optimum design has to do with the selection of isolators that cause an index of the system performance to be optimized; that is, to take on a value either less or greater than that associated with other candidate isolators. In addition, the optimum design usually must satisfy constraints which are imposed on other aspects of the system response and the parameters which describe the isolators.

Price: $25.00 (available as bound photocopy only)

Ronald D. Kelly and George Richman
Published: 1969

The mechanical shock field has long presented one of the most perplexing challenges to the engineering profession. The intensity of the input from the shock environment,  even though it may exist from but a brief period of time, causes it to be of particular concern. The effects of explosive overpressures on men, equipment, and structures; the effects of earthquakes on structures; the effects of an automobile crash on its occupants; and the effects of dropping delicate equipment on the floor; all of these are examples of the many situations where the shock environment represents a clear hazard.

Because the solution of shock problems is so important to many application areas, we feel privileged to have been given this opportunity to make a contribution toward easing the solution of shock problems. To solve any specific shock problem, a number of technical disciplines are required. These disciplines include data acquisition, data analysis, data evaluation, design, fabrication, and testing. The attention of our efforts in this book is focused solely on the data analysis discipline.

The one idea that we hope will be most firmly conveyed to the reader is our strong conviction about the manner in which a data analysis technique should be selected. We believe that the technique employed to analyze any particular shock problem should be selected on its ability to provide a satisfactory solution. An analysis technique should not be selected just because "it was always used in the past" or because it is convenient to perform. The merits of the technique in providing the desired solution should be the primary selection criterion - tempered by economic and time considerations, naturally.

Price: $25.00

Robert G. Loewy and Vincent J. Piarulli
Published: 1969

In engineering circles it is common to speak of "inventing the wheel" to imply the oldest of developments. And it is true that rotational motion was employed - for example, to achieve translation as with the wheel and axle, or to store energy as in the sling - in truly ancient devices.

Much later, in transferring power from one point to another, the use of drive belts and related mechanisms and multistep cogwheel (and subsequently, gear) trains gave way to the use of drive shafts because of their advantages as regards efficiency, wear, and adjustment. Since strength requirements are related to the torque carried by such a shaft, and the relationship between torque and rotational speed is inverse - for a given level of transmitted power - there has been a continuing trend toward higher and higher shaft speeds. The dynamic forces of rotation, which act on drive shafts, of course, also increase with rotational speed. Thus, the problems associated with rotational shaft dynamics have been increasingly important in the field of engineering for the last century.

The proliferation of devices rotating at high speeds in recent years has brought both new problems and a concentration of attention which, in solving one problem, has thrown new light on a host of others-sometimes on a puzzling phenomenon or aspect of long standing. The "fly-ball governor," probably the first recognizable component with no function other than to provide feedback control, depended on rotational dynamic; ultrahigh speed gyros may be considered their modern counterpart. Gas turbines have rotational speeds that were unheard of only a short time ago, and the closer to those speeds a drive shaft can function, the less gearing is required to go from one to the other. Airplane propellers and helicopter rotors provide still another class of examples where limber structures are subject to problems arising from the complexities of rotational dynamics.

Price: $25.00

Loren D. Enochson
Published: 1968

The monograph has grown out of the experience of the authors in the field of digital data analysis and thus represents a viewpoint biased by that experience. On the other hand, the material presented here has been employed for the most part in practical data analysis environments and therefore has the advantages gained from trial by fire.

This monograph cannot be considered as an introductory text on the subject. Rather, the authors have attempted to include as much material as was available to them at the time of writing. Much of the resulting work may be found to be too advanced by many potential readers. To alleviate this difficulty, Chapter 1 has been included as a bridge between a knowledge of elementary statistics and some of the more difficult concepts that are required. Examples are introduced throughout which should clarify the text. The theoretical aspects of many topics are discussed more thoroughly by Hannan.

Proofs of some important theorems are discussed, but the reader should not be deceived: The authors are not mathematically rigorous in their presentation and there are many sticky mathematical points to which only a passing reference has been made.

Time and space (this monograph was originally viewed as about 100 pages) did not permit the inclusion of certain time series data analysis to9pics which are of great interest. Chief of these is prewhitening. It is felt that the application of prewhitening depends upon an understanding of the physics of the phenomenon being investigated, so that an adequate discussion of it would have required delving into meteorology, structural mechanics, seismology, etc., which are far afield from the intended direction of the monograph. Another major omission is a discussion of current procedures for analyzing transient or short duration data. However, this will be rectified with the issuance of another Shock and Vibration Information Center monograph in this series on that topic by R.D. Kelly and G. Richman.

Price: $25.00 (available as bound photocopy only)

Gordon S. Mustin
Published: 1968

It has become apparent to us that there is a need for concise, critical, and comprehensive studies of the state of the art in specialized areas within the field of mechanical shock and vibration. Although we realize that there are a large number of subjects that could be treated, practical considerations force us to make what we hope is a judicious selection from the many excellent topics proposed. After an unfortunate delay in publication, we now present the second in a series of monographs by authorities in the technology.

This book is intended primarily for those concerned with the design of cushioning systems for the protection of fragile items in shipment. It should be pointed out, however, that this is not a design handbook. It does not provide "cookbook" methods for the solution of package cushioning design problems.

The material contained here applies not only to package cushioning design, but also anywhere that shock and vibration are isolated by materials with distributed mass and elasticity. The contents should be helpful to those concerned with aerial delivery, space vehicle recovery and the isolation of underground structures from ground shock.

More than 300 references were used in writing this work. Some references are only mentioned in passing, while others are commented on critically and in detail.

The bulk of the monograph should not deter the reader. If he is interested in the theoretical analysis of the behavior of cushioning materials, he should consult Chapter 3. For basic design approaches with respect to shock isolation, Chapter 4 should be read. Chapter 5 discusses the methods available to analyze the response of the item being isolated, and Chapter 6 is concerned with the special problem of vibration isolation. The author is careful to point out that vibration and shock isolation employ similar analytical techniques. The performance of cushioning materials under extreme environments is covered in Chapter 7, and Chapter 8 deals with drift and creep of these materials. For those not interested in the mathematical derivations, Chapter 9 provides a fairly comprehensive summary of the analysis of cushion behavior.

Price: $25.00 (available as bound photocopy only)

Richard H. Lyon
Published: 1967

It is the purpose of this monograph to present a critical review of the ability of the engineering profession to anticipate the dynamic environment of a flight vehicle, to predict the vehicle response to this environment, and to simulate the expected environment in the laboratory. The ability to do these things has progressed significantly in the last few years, although engineering practice has not completely kept up with the rapidly advancing technology. It is hoped that this monograph will aid in spreading this new information to a larger group of environmental engineers.

Many of the methods described in the following chapters will rely on arguments motivated on physical grounds as well as on mathematical models of the environment and the structure. Environmental engineers have generally taken the attitude that predictions of response must be made, even in the face of imperfect data and methods. For this reason some empiricism is evident in the arguments. Empiricism is frequently useful because of the economics of effort that can result from simple rule-of-thumb procedures.

Generally, the studies that we report on are applicable to sustained loads that are random in time but may or may not be spatially homogeneous. We exclude by implication, therefore, such loads as pyrotechnic shock and combustion or structural-propulsion interaction instabilities. In certain cases, it is possible to treat these loads by statistical methods, but the appropriate conditions require experience and judgment for their application.

Price: $25.00 (available as bound photocopy only)

To place an order for one of the above products, please contact Ashley Shumaker. 
Mastercard, Visa, American Express, and checks are acceptable forms of payment.