Synchronization in Mechanical Systems

This chapter compiles Carlos López-Cajún and the authors’ work on synchronizationSynchronization. SynchronizationSynchronization is present in many mechanical systems, and its identification and analysis require an understanding of the complexity of the individual elements’ interrelations. This chapter starts with a reference to previous works, then describes the general concepts of synchronizationSynchronization, presents some of the most commonly used methods for studying synchronizationSynchronization, and ends by summarizing the limitations and future work. The methods analyzed are frequency spectrum analysisFrequency spectrum analysis, signal correlationSignal correlation, spectrogramsSpectrograms, and Kuramoto’s order parameter. The described methods are exemplified with experimental vibration data recorded from twenty-two rotor blades.