Customer
Our client, who specialize in the design, manufacture and installation of equipment for civil engineering structures, approached us to purchase a shock absorber compression bench.
Tested product
Shock absorber
The product tested is a damper to reduce the sway of buildings during earthquakes.
A damper is a mechanical system designed to reduce the violence of a shock or the amplitude of its vibrations.
The building is not directly connected to the ground. It is 'resting' on bearings that allow it to slide. The damper is attached between the building and the ground and, like a car, it reduces the amplitude of the movements generated by earthquakes.
Objective
To characterize the maximum forces supported by our client's earthquake dampers. The compression test rig must develop a force of 3,000 kN, or approximately 300 tones. The maximum length of a test product is 3,000 mm.
Problematic issues
To produce a system that can generate a compression force of 3000 kN (300 tones), for dampers of widely varying lengths.
Solution and result
The equipment proposed and designed by our teams is a horizontal damper compression bench. It is composed of a compression frame, a hydraulic cylinder, a mobile crossbar, a remote control panel and an electrical cabinet.
In order to reduce the stroke of the cylinder, LF Technologies has designed a mobile crossbar system, itself composed of 100 mm pitch notches, allowing the length between the cylinder and the fixed part to be adjusted.
The cylinder is driven by a hydraulic unit allowing a speed regulated control of the compression cycle.
