Are We Shaking Too Much? An Inquiry into Environmental Random Vibration Testing Margins

Problem Statement: The conventional, MIL-STD-810 approach to vibration environment derivation is perhaps too conservative, leading to unnecessary failures during acceptance & qualification vibration testing of Armstrong’s one-off flight equipment.

Objective: This presentation explores some alternative understandings of the distributions of vibration severity in nonstationary environments. Proposed methods of sorting and adding appropriate margin are explored.