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Understanding Vibration-Shaker Testing Equipment

In the world of Defence, testing and analysis play a prominent role. Defence transportation involves high stakes, as it transports highly sensitive and dangerous materials. Testing of a defence transportation vehicle involves in vibration testing, shaker testing, vehicle failures, performance testing and product screening. Electrodynamics, data physics and servo hydraulics are the standard solutions, which power the testing equipment. It tests the vibration levels and shaking levels of the vehicle. As they involve in most sensitive areas, they have to meet the required phenomenon. The frequency of vibrations is a measurement of how many tip-tops the equipment in the vehicle will face in a provided period of time.

What is a Vibration Test?

Forecasting a machine or a product's reactions to the shakes and vibrations encountered during its crucial part of its usage. A vibration testing can perform both random and sine testing for widespread industries including automotive, aerospace, aviation, medical devices and defence equipment.

It simply measures the quality control of the vehicle. With a shaker testing equipment, which includes a variety of sizes, which can meet up to 70,000 force pounds.

Shaker Test Equipment:

Military equipment providers use shakers to improve and maintain the quality of their work. Shakers are possible identifiers of vibration levels in a Device Under Test (DUT) to random, swept-sine and migrating shocks. A power amplifier operates, the shaker and an accelerometer fixed on the shaker’s vibrating table. The Vibration Controlling System (VCS) programmed with the desired PROFILE for the test. It provides a low-voltage DRIVE signal to the amplifier which sounds like a high power version of this signal to the shaker.

Generally, not all shaker units need to bear similar levels of stress and vibration, as not all shakers are the same. Shaker measurement can be classified into three mechanisms, driving the vibrations into a distributed type of shaker. They are Mechanical vibration shakers, Electro-hydraulic shakers and Electromagnetic shakers.

Testing Vibrations in Defence Industry:

Military equipment frequently undergoes vibration test for the survivability of munitions, systems and entire vehicles. Multi-shaker or dual shaker tests are often run for large payloads. Military guidance has standard specifications for the applications; they are Environmental Stress Screening (ESS) MIL-STD 810 and NATO AECTP-400.

MIL-STD-810: This regimen standard sets precise testing methods in order to simulate the harsh environmental conditions under which products and devices will be required to operate in the field.

Ground vibration testing is an important step in defence aircraft’s certification process. The test measures the aircraft’s dynamic characteristics in different configurations, in order to validate the vibration levels in the aircraft. It is a proven solution that shortens testing and analysis time without compromising in results.

Underwater vibration test system often used by the world’s Navies for calibration of acoustic ranges, sonar signal generation and measurement, for training and even minesweeping.

Vibration Control:

A Vibration Controller allows to create a test profile on a PC and generates a signal to match the test mode. A sensor on the Electrodynamics Shaker provides negative signals to keep the system in closed-loop control. A control program within the controller, compute and transfer function of the closed-loop system which then, corrects the output drive signal such that the vibration on the shaker table matches the frequency and amplitude. There are many software and hardware equipment to control the vibrations.

A vibration tester predicts the failures and estimates the life cycle of the product. Many defence product development companies employ a vibration testing engineer to ensure their engines, roar softly. Shakers are highly precise machines to test the equipment.