Material Classification Based on Vibration Analysis

In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of an object’s vibration in identifying its material of construction. A simple vibration test is performed to classify different types of materials. The test is done by performing small hammer excitation on the object then recording its vibration using one acceleration sensor. Four different materials were tested (steel, hardwood, softwood, and plastic). The vibration signal was analyzed using MATLAB based model. The trained model was able to recognize the testing samples of each material. The advantages of this method are that it is accurate, fast and simple, can be performed on-site and is relatively inexpensive