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-type applications, the single channel VA-12 may prove to be a simpler and quicker 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 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.
If all you need is overall levels (for passby measurements for instance) you may find that a simpler meter (the NL-20 or NL 21 for Class 2, or the NL-31 for Class 1) will do all you need. It may also be worth considering an NL-22 (Class 2) or NL-32 (Class 1) with an NX-22RT card, which will measure (but not automatically log) real time octaves or third octaves.
FFT options are also available for both the NL-22/32 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.