Design of the uniaxial shaker with variable stiffness

During the vibration testing, various types of vibration drivers of different structures are used. Electrodynamic drivers are generally used for smaller excitation forces whereas for bigger excitation forces hydraulic drivers are used. The main disadvantage of drivers can be found in their size. One of the possibilities for size reduction may be a suitable engineering design. The paper deals with the design of a small uniaxial driver which uses an inertial driver as a source of the excitation force. The structure considers the requirements for stiffness changes of the whole system with the aim of available frequency range tuning.