22. Design of a Test Setup for Measuring Dynamic Stiffness of Vibration Isolators

In this paper, design efforts to develop a custom test setup for measuring dynamic stiffness of vibration isolators are presented. The setup is designed to conduct dynamic stiffness measurements for various static preload values and over a certain (target) frequency range. Direct Method has been selected among the methods defined by standards found in the literature. In order to investigate the effect of basic design parameters of the test setup on its overall performance, an equivalent eight degree of freedom lumped parameter model of the test setup is used which takes into account the basic dimensions and materials used for main structural components of the proposed setup design as well as the inertial characteristics of the isolators. Using the equivalent model, virtual tests are performed and the accuracy of the test setup is studied for various testing scenarios. A major work that is conducted as part of this work is to come up with a procedure that will enable tuning of the setup parameters such that the percent error on measured dynamic stiffness of various types of isolators are minimized for the case when various levels of error are present in measured displacement and force amplitudes.