Analysis of load cell data

[IsItFriday]

I am new to this forum and am looking for some assistance on signal analysis coming from a load cell. Can you somehow go from force data from a load cell to total energy as a single number? (I realize I could probably solve this much easier if I simply mounted an accelerometer on the device)

My thought was Force to impulse (Fdt) which can then yield velocity by taking the change in discrete force values and multiplying it by the sampling time and subsequently dividing by the mass which is constant(Fdt/m)

The integral of velocity yields distance traveled for each time step (X=int(V)dt)

Multiplying the original force curve times distance yields work (W=Fdx)

The integral of work over a specific time window yields total energy (Wtot=int(W)dt)

Does this make sense? The end goal is a single number to characterize whether one signal has more noise than another. If there is a better way I am open to any suggestions.

Thank you

 

[Compositepro]

The Dynatup drop weight impactor works this way, but you must know the mass or the impactor to calculate velocity and energy from force data.

 

[IsItFriday]

Thanks for the reply. I'll look into that a bit more and see if I can get some details from Instron.