Method for increasing the speed of an electrodynamic shaker for vibration test of rolling stock equipment

The velocity required in IEC 61373 for long-life random vibration testing of Category-3 rolling stock equipment in the vertical direction is 2.7821 m/s, but the maximum velocity of existing electrodynamic shakers falls in the range of 2–2.5 m/s. In this study, an electrodynamic shaker with a velocity satisfying the requirements for vibration testing of Category-3 rolling stock equipment was developed. First, mechanical and equivalent circuit models of an electrodynamic shaker were developed. On this basis, reducing the impedance of the armature coil was identified as the best option for increasing the velocity of the shaker. However, owing to the impact of the back electromotive force of the armature coil, a decrease in the input impedance of the armature coil at low frequencies leads to an increase in its input impedance at high frequencies. To reduce the input impedance at high frequencies, a shading coil was incorporated into the circuit. The shading coil-incorporated new design was modeled using equivalent circuits and simulated numerically. The results showed that the improvement measures—incorporating a shading coil, increasing the cross-sectional area, and reducing the number of turns of the armature coil—effectively reduced the input impedance of the armature coil, thereby increasing the armature coil current and the velocity of the shaker. Finally, a shaker with a maximum velocity of 3.2 m/s was fabricated based on the new design and was validated to satisfy the high-velocity requirement for the long-life vibration test of Category-3 equipment in the vertical direction as specified in IEC 61373.