ABSTRACT
Many mechanical failures are caused by shock and vibration, so a design to reduce or prevent such failures is often required when developing new machines or processes. Vibration is usually thought of as a more-or-less continuous motion while shock is a transient occurrence. Fatigue stressing and acoustic noise are two of the common bad effects of vibration, and these may also arise with shock-type loading. Perhaps more often, a single excessive shock event will cause an immediate failure due to the plastic deformation or actual breakage of machine parts. Many practical problems involve the protection of delicate products or equipment like electronics “boxes,” which might be mounted to a vehicle wall or fl oor. There is also an entire industry devoted to the engineering of shipping containers to protect the contents from drops or bumps, which inevitably occur during the loading, transportation, and unloading processes. Another large application area is in military systems where equipment is regularly exposed to blast loading.
