Environmental Accelerated Testing. Use of Virtual Test to Extend Physical Approach

HBM nCode

Tuesday, June 16 2009

Vibrating components are highly susceptible to fatigue failure. Most components must fulfil some form of durability certification test prior to production. Tests are conducted on real prototype components or use a CAE based simulation of the component. The drive signals are often in the form of PSD’s obtained using the FDS and SRS/ERS test tailoring approach. The sign-off test can be accelerated using reduction factors applied on the PSD’s in order to optimise costs and development duration. Numerical Simulation may help by verifying the loading is realistic and representative and by showing a contour plot of the component damage calculated using real materials fatigue data. This paper presents this mixed Test/CAE approach and its application in a case study.