Mechanical shock test

Mechanical shock during transportation, assembly, in service or operation

A mechanical shock is a single, short accelerating impulse. The resulting accelerations are in general significantly higher than the accelerations that occur during any normal vibration and can be up to several hundreds of g. Mechanical shocks occur during transportation, assembly, in service or daily use and can lead to malfunctions or complete failure of technical products. Examples of mechanical shocks are the impact on the floor when falling, the slamming of the vehicle door or a hard touchdown of the transport pallet.

Demonstrating robustness against mechanical shocks

The mechanical shock test simulates the impact loads that technical products are subjected to in real life. Acceleration pulses are applied in all three spatial axes in both negative and positive directions. They are described by the pulse shape (e.g. half-sine, sawtooth, trapezoid), their amplitude (up to several 100 g) and the pulse duration (in msec). There are no fixed limits to the number of pulses. It depends on the intended use of the product.