THE NEED FOR CONTROLLED SHOCKS - A NEW TYPE OF SHOCK EXCITER ALLOWS TO APPLY WELL DEFINED MECHANICAL SHOCKS

• Abstract:

  Shock exciters available on the market today suffer from a lack of control of the generated shocks. This paper will present a new type of shock exciter developed by SPEKTRA which is based on the well known Hopkinson-Bar but using a piezoelectric actuator to apply the force pulse input (* patent pending). It will be shown that a piezoelectric actuator driven Hopkinson-Bar generates well defined shocks allowing the control of pulse width and amplitude independently over a wide range. Furthermore the spectrum of the applied shocks can be controlled accurately by shaping the input force pulse coming from the actuator. Thus this new shock exciter is a valuable tool for shock calibration in metrology as well as for sensor characterisation in development departments.
• Keywords:

  shock exciter, Hopkinson-bar, piezoelectric actuator, MEMS testing
• Download:

  IMEKO-WC-2009-TC22-396.pdf
• DOI:

  _unreg_wc-2009.396

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