Vibration Testing

Vibration testing is the application of mechanical motion to a component, product, system or structure in order to observe its response or degradation over time and is used to determine how products and components react to vibrational forces during their lifecycle. This type of testing is crucial in assessing the durability and reliability of items that will be subjected to vibrations during transportation, operation, or use in various environments.

Although there is overlap between the two definitions, vibration testing is distinguished from mechanical shock testing in the sense that it is applied for a longer period of time, ranging from a few minutes to many weeks.

Mechanical shock tests have typical durations of less than one second per shock, although multiple shocks over longer time periods are commonly performed.

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The Purpose of Vibration Testing

The vibration test is generally intended to simulate the expected real-world vibration in typical or worst-case applications. Usually, the test severity is substantially higher than typical real world vibration levels. This is done in order to do a test in hours, days or weeks that simulates years of product life.

This includes tests such as Highly Accelerated Life Tests (HALT) that are much more severe than even the worst-case vibration expected in the real-world.

And there are more modest tests such as Environmental Stress Screening (ESS) which is done to weed out weak units that would fail early in real-world operation, and then ship to customers only those units that demonstrate their hardiness by surviving a test that is sufficiently mild that it does not seriously reduce the product’s expected remaining life.

Although the test amplitude is typically higher than the expected real world amplitude, the shape of the vibration test signal is intended to closely follow the actual signal shape expected.