Development of measurement capability for micro-vibration evaluation with application to chip fabrication facilities

ABSTRACT

In this project, Multidisciplinary Center of Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) researchers conducted vibration tests at a site in West Seneca, New York to determine its suitability for attracting and supporting a ChipFab facility. ChiFab, a short name for a semiconducto chip fabrication facility, is high-tech manufactuing facility where the electronic chips for items ranging from computers to cellular phones to automobiles are manufactured. The industrial park site (North America Park) is located near a railroad, a major expressway and an active mining operation. The level of micro-vibrations of ground motion is critical for this type of facility. Several locations were instrumented within the industrial park. Three direction acceleration components were measured at each location, during the period between November 1 and December 1, 1998. These acceleration data were subsequently converted into RMS velocity (one-thrid-octave band) through specially derived analytical relationships. It was found that the proposed ChipFab site in the northen section of the industrial park was suitable for the manufactuting facility. The measurement system used to conduct this testing was developed specifically for this project. This report describes the measurement system detail, including its sensory system, data acquisition and recording, sensor installation and distribution of the measurement locations. The procedure to obtain measurements, data evaluation, and results and analyses related to the West Seneca site are also described in the report. In addition to the encouraging results at the specific site (North America Center, West Seneca, NY), the ground vibration measuring procedure developed can potentially be used as an industrial standard for delicate manufacturing site evaluation. The report also introduces the theorical development for the relationship between frequency spectra and RMS values, which can be adopted for a wide range of applications on interpretations of the data obtained from up-to-date data acquisition systems