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Glossary
Absorber—a device that is attached to a system to at-
tenuate its vibration amplitude; see also vibra-
tion absorber
Acceleration—a vector quantity that is the rate of
change of velocity with respect to time
Acceleration, absolute—acceleration with respect to
a fixed point in an inertial reference frame
Accelerance—the ratio of the Laplace transform of a
vibratory system’s acceleration output to the
Laplace transform of the force input; the corre-
sponding frequency-response function is ob-
tained by substituting s jv
Accelerometer—a device whose output is propor-
tional to acceleration
Admittance—the ratio of the Laplace transform of a
vibratory system’s output displacement to the
Laplace transform of the force input; the corre-
sponding frequency-response function is ob-
tained by substituting s jv; used synonymously
with receptance and compliance functions
Amplitude response—the nondimensional
frequency-response function used to relate the
output response of a linear vibratory system to
the input
Angular acceleration—a vector quantity that is the
rate of change of angular velocity with respect to
time; acceleration associated with rotational
motions
Angular momentum—a vector quantity that is the
rotational momentum of a system; moment of
linear momentum
Angular speed—magnitude of the angular velocity
Angular velocity—a vector quantity that is the rate of
rotation around an axis
Aperiodic excitation—an excitation without perio-
dicity; for linear systems, this typically means a
waveform of finite duration or the sum of two or
more sine and/or cosine functions whose indi-
vidual frequencies are incommensurate (i.e., not
related by a rational number)
Band pass filter—a system that allows frequency
components in the input that are within the re-
gion defined by its lower and upper cutoff fre-
quencies to pass relatively unattenuated while
those frequency components outside this region
are attenuated
Bandwidth—the frequency range for a system; for a
band pass filter, this is the difference between the
upper and lower cutoff frequencies; for a low
pass filter it is the upper cutoff frequency; for a
high pass filter it is the lower cutoff frequency
Base excitation—an input applied at the base of a
system
Bernoulli-Euler beam—an elastic beam in which the
bending moment about the cross section of the
beam is linearly proportional to the second