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The application of accelerated testing theory is a difficult proposition, yet one that can result in considerable time and cost savings, as well as increasing a product's useful life. In Accelerated Testing: A Practitioner's Guide to Accelerated and Reliability Testing, readers are exposed to the latest, most practical knowledge available in this dynamic and important discipline. Authors Bryan Dodson and Harry Schwab draw on their considerable experience in the field to present comprehensive, insightful views in this book. Development and quality assurance tests are defined in detail and are presented from a practical viewpoint. Included are testing fundamentals, plans and models, and equipment and methods most commonly used in accelerated testing. Individuals seeking to evaluate and improve the design lives of components and systems will find this book a valuable reference, with special attention being paid to testing in the mobility industries.

The critical structural criterion for many automotive components is their capability to survive the applied vibration environments. To this end, laboratory testing can assist in the design and development of new components. Of particular advantage is the capability to accelerate the laboratory testing to evaluate component configurations more quickly than by duplicating real-world conditions. Accelerated testing can save both time and money in component development while maintaining the frequency content and applied energy levels of the real-world environments. This paper presents information on the acquisition of data, data reduction, the development of laboratory vibration environments, and details for testing. Evaluations are made of sinusoidal, real time simulation, and random vibration test methods. The requirements necessary for developing an accelerated laboratory test environment are presented.

The application of random vibration methods is usually limited to the inertial loading of components, with a test being controlled by an accelerometer on an electrodynamic shaker. However it is possible to apply the same philosophy to dynamic load testing, where the electrodynamic shaker is controlled from a load cell. The test input is defined by a Power Spectral Density plot in terms of load rather than acceleration. A situation was encountered with a structural link in which loosening occurred when it was subjected a real-world dynamic environment. It was desired to simulate this situation in the laboratory so that other configurations of the link could be evaluated for elimination of the phenomenon. Since the real world environment is random in nature it was desirable to utilize a loading input which simulated this. Real world load data was unavailable for developing the test so a generic input spectrum was used and converted to terms of loads.