The Rion VM-54 has proved a particularly popular vibration meter amongst engineers and consultants in the marine and off-shore industries. This may be because the instrument carries out potentially complex vibration analysis very easily and quickly or because of the 3 options that are particularly well-suited to marine and off-shore requirements: the VX-54WS Ship Vibration program, the VX-54WB1 Whole Body Vibration program and the VX-54FT FFT Narrow bands analysis program.
The VM-54 is a tri-axial vibration meter. It is well-suited to evaluating vibration levels with respect to human response and can be used for more general diagnostic and evaluative work. However, for diagnostic, investigative or condition monitoring/machinery health-type applications, the single channel VA-12 may prove to be a simpler, quicker and cost-effective solution.
Our most popular sound level meter for marine applications has proved to be the Rion NA-28. This multi-function analyser does everything that is likely to be necessary for marine and offshore noise/sound applications yet it is quick and simple to use. The NA-28 is an analyser which measures and logs overall levels and octave and third octave band levels simultaneously.
However, simpler evaluations of overall sound pressre level (such as pass-by noise), can be carried out with the lower cost Rion NL-52. The NL-52 can actually upgraded to provide most of the functionality of the NA-28 and options such as octave/third octave analysis can be added at a later date or even hired for temporary use if only needed occasionally.
Audio recording and FFT options are also available for both the NL-52 and the NA-28.
Furthermore, although we would recommend the use of a dedicated vibration meter for vibration measurements (particularly if vibration levels at frequencies below about 10 Hz are a concern), the Rion PV-57A accelerometer can be used with the Rion sound level meters and analysers referred to above and this can provide a low cost means of investigating both vibration and noise with the same meter.
We have two highly-portable and battery powered options for multichannel data collection and analysis.
The Rion DA-21 is a four channel data recorder which very easily records standard calibrated wav files onto an SD card. Furthermore, two DA-21s can be synchronised to give up to 8 channels of synchronised data.
The RioNote is a tablet-form multi-channel analyser which can be connected (by cable or wirelessly) to up to 16 sensors. Rion have developed quality assured measurement tools (Octave/Third Octave analysis, FFT and wav file recording) for the RioNote. Specific functionality, however, can be added by the devlopment of applications within the RioNote's Android environment.