VibSim draws on capability built up at the University of Southampton over more than sixty years.
The Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) was founded in 1963 and is now an internationally recognised centre for sound and vibration, with research spanning acoustics, structural dynamics and signal processing. Within it, the Human Factors Research Unit has more than forty years of continuous research into how people respond to vibration, work that shaped many of the international standards used today to measure and assess vibration exposure. The Astronautics Research Group, which has trained engineers for the space sector since 1974, adds expertise in spacecraft structures and the environments they are built to survive.
The laboratory exists so that this expertise, and the facilities built around it, are available to industry as well as to research. VibSim operates as a shared University facility with a single point of contact for enquiries, whether the work is a standardised test to a published method, a bespoke experimental programme, or hire of the laboratory by a client running their own testing. Projects are delivered through the University's established enterprise arrangements, drawing on academic departments and consultancy units as the work requires, and income earned is reinvested in the facility, its equipment and its people.
For a client, that means testing carried out to research standards, by a team that helped write many of the standards those tests are run to, with the independence of a university laboratory rather than a commercial test house.
VibSim combines complementary capabilities in human simulation and engineering vibration testing.
Its facilities include:
- a six-axis motion simulator
- large electro-hydraulic motion platforms
- an instrumented treadmill
- a range of electrodynamic shakers
Together, these facilities support the following studies:
- human responses to motion and the passenger environment
- the dynamic characterisation
- durability assessment and qualification of components and engineering systems
Take a virtual tour around vibration and simulation laboratory (VibSim).
Email us to find out more about our facilities and how we might be able to work with you.