Hi! I am not sure this is the correct topic for such a question, because I struggle at identifying whether my problem is at a HW or SW level. I struggle at making my acquisition system acquiring correct measurement values. I use a NI USB-4432 device with LabView 2014 SP1 on windows 7. My setup involves an impact hammer test. In particular, I use a PCB ICP 086E80 impact hammer and a PCB ICP 352A24 accelerometer (-50G to + 50G, with 100 mV/G as sensitivity, with excitation current of 2,1 mA). The hammer enters the ai0 channel, while the accelerometer is put on the ai1 channel. Finally, the hammer triggers the acquisition of both the hammer impact and acceleration within the device. The trigger is an analog edge with rise slope. The DAQ assistant virtual channels settings are attached as images. Basically the hammer impact range is from -5 to 15 N, while the accelerometer is used at its full range (-50G to 50G). My problem is the following: when I perform the impact, the accelerometer registers an acceleration which initially ranges from -120 to 120 G, then correctly sets on values below +-50 G. I would expect my accelerometer to saturate, nevertheless the acquired waveform seems not having troubles with such out of range values. I tried to convert the virtual channel from acceleration to voltage and measure the input. In this configuration, the sensor seems not to saturate at +- 5 Volts, which should correspond to +- 50 G for the acceleration. I have attached some screenshots to better explain the problem.
I hope someone could help me, as I tried everything but still cannot get my head around it.
Thank you in advance to everyone would help me!