Monitoring and simulating non-stationary vibrations for package optimization

This paper introduces a new method to analyse and simulate vibrations of transport vehicles. The method pays particular attention to the non‐stationary nature of vibrations, especially during road transport. The limitations of current methods used for analysing and simulating vehicle vibrations are demonstrated. The paper shows how the Hilbert transform can be used to compute the vibration intensity and offers substantial data reduction advantages. It is shown how statistical characteristics of the vibration intensity can be combined with spectral characteristics to enable more realistic simulations of transport vibrations. Finally, it is shown how the processed data is well suited for use with modern telemetry techniques integrated with web browser technologies. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.