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Methods for conducting accelerated vibration fatigue testing of structures, such as MIL-STD-810G, allow for the non-linear scaling of the test time with the inverse of the rms vibration amplitude based on the slope of the material S-N curve obtained from cyclic fatigue tests. The Fatigue Damage Spectrum (FDS) is used as a method to allow for different level scalings at different frequencies in a broadband vibration environment using the relative responses of resonances in the structure. A recent development in industry has been to mix impulses with random excitations to increase the vibration peak levels (as measured by the kurtosis), thereby accelerating the fatigue even more than would occur with a Gaussian excitation. This paper presents results from a study to determine the conditions under which high kurtosis, impulsive excitations actually produce high kurtosis responses in structural resonances thus increasing the level of the FDS.

Random vibration control systems produce a PSD plot by averaging FFTs. Modern controllers can set the Degrees of Freedom (DOF), which is a measure of the amount of averaging to use to estimate the PSD. The PSD is a way to present a random signal-which by nature “bounces” about the mean, at times making high excursions from the mean-in a format that makes it easy to determine the validity of a test. This process takes time as many frames of data are collected in order to generate the PSD estimate, and a test can appear to be out of tolerance until the controller has enough data to estimate the PSD with a sufficient level of confidence. Something is awry with a PSD estimate that achieves total in-tolerance immediately after starting or during level changes, and this can create dangerous over or under test conditions within specific frequency bands and should be avoided.