The Testing Blog

National Technical Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTSC) (NTS), was awarded contracts by General Atomics (GA) Electromagnetic Systems Division (EMS) of San Diego, Calif. for the performance of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC and environmental testing for the Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) and the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS).

NTS, under contract to GA EMS, supports environmental qualification testing at GA’s EMS manufacture and test facility at Tupelo, Miss. Some of the tests are being conducted at Joint Base McGuire-Dix – Lakehurst, N.J., where full-scale EMALS and AAG systems are installed and qualified by GA- EMS and the Navy. The EMALS and AAG customer is Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR).

NTS will provide environmental and EMC test engineering and evaluation for AAG and EMALS systems to be installed on CVN 78. Testing will be conducted at both the major assembly and component level. Additional testing will be conducted at NTS laboratories located in Santa Clarita and Fullerton, Calif., Boxborough, Mass. and Tinton Falls, N.J. NTS resources support the testing and evaluation program over the next two years.

The EMALS system consists of a high-voltage transformer rectifier manufactured by Neeltran, high power inverters manufactured by GA EMS, a large motor generator, to store energy, manufactured by Kato, and a rectifier manufactured by L-3 Pulse Power Division. Four linear induction motors manufactured by GA EMS will accelerate the launch aircraft from a dead stop to about 150 knots in 3 seconds or less.

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National Technical Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: NTSC) (NTS), is pleased to announce the addition of tunable resonant beam apparatus for metal-to-metal simulated Pyroshock testing at its Tinton Falls, NJ engineering and test facility.

Pyroshock testing is designed to simulate the high-frequency, high-magnitude shock pulse that a product may experience as the result of an explosive event, such as an explosive impact on a military tank structure or the separation of booster rockets from the space shuttle during flight. This type of explosive impact can cause failures in electronic components and thus endanger the survival of the system as a whole.

The Pyroshock test differs from other mechanical shock tests in that there is very little rigid body motion of the product. In this test method, an aluminum bar with rectangular cross-section is clamped to a massive base. Clamps are intended to impose nearly fixed-end conditions on the beam. When the beam is struck with a cylindrical mass fired from the air gun beneath the beam, the beam will resonate at the first bending frequency of the beam, which is a function of the distance between the clamps. The tunable resonant beam method provides a good, general purpose Pyroshock simulator, since the knee frequency is continuously adjustable over a wide frequency range, 500 Hz to 3,000 Hz for example.

NTS’ new 17,000 pound system is designed to simulate the far-field Pyroshock spectrum. The original system design was developed by Neil Davie, Principal Member of the Technical Staff, Mechanical Environments, Sandia National Laboratories. The design was then adopted as a “recommended practice” by the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology and published in the “Pyroshock Testing Techniques” IEST-RP-DTE032.1 document.

“The addition of this new test capability demonstrates both the technical expertise of the NTS engineering team in its construction, and our commitment to continue to add capabilities and capacity to meet the ongoing needs of our customers in the defense and aerospace markets” commented NTS General Manager Richard Gaynor, “We look forward to demonstrating this unique new capability.”

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