An Accelerometer Test Fixture using a 2” Subwoofer

About 12 years ago ROHM acquired Kionix, a MEMS inertial sensor company headquartered in Ithica,
NY. Recently some of our accelerometer customers have asked us to evaluate sensors at a particular
frequency, and to confirm response in their configurations.

Seemed to me that it would be good to have our own setup in our Novi, MI office to do this. Went to a
local Calibration Laboratory and asked them how they “calibrate” accelerometers. They showed me the
fixture they use which is a PCB Piezotronics 396C11 Air Bearing Shaker shown here. The “Device Under
Test” is fastened to the center:

396C11 Top View

 396C11 Side View

This “Shaker” is driven by a 19” Rackmount Power Supply and Amplifier as shown here:

Shaker System Power Supply and Amplifier

Cost estimate for this package is about $20k. It works by using a “Reference Accelerometer” for
feedback and it provides a sine wave current excitation to the Shaker and adjusts the current as needed
to produce a constant “G” force over the frequency of interest. Then the Output from the Device Under
Test is examined over the frequency range.

So I searched the internet to see how other people are doing this and found the attached Paper 68,
where Dale Litwhiler at Penn State University built his own Shaker using a Subwoofer speaker. Mostly
copied his design but with improvements (I think). Found a company called Tang Band makes a lot of
Subwoofer speakers and I looked through available models and found the W2-2040S to be of interest. It
offers 5.3mm of travel which is about as much as the 396C11 Shaker! Here is a photo of the 2”
Subwoofer, and how I attached to a 3” thick solid wood base for support:

Tang Band W2-2040 1 Subwoofer mounted to Wooden Base 1

Fabricated an aluminum plate designed to accept our KX Evaluation Board:

Aluminum Mounting Plate 1

 ROHM EVK above Mounting Plate
The Subwoofer Voice Coil which provides the force to do the shaking is 1” in diameter. Following what
Dale at Penn State did, cut a 0.6” length of 1” Schedule 80 PVC Pipe and glued it to the front of the
Subwoofer, and tapped eight holes to line up with the holes on the Mounting Plate:
To know exactly how much acceleration is being applied (just as in the Cal Lab setup) you need a
Reference Accelerometer. My choice was a PCB Piezotronics Y352C65 as shown. When I explained what
we were doing Piezotronics offered to sell us a demo unit complete with a new Certificate of Calibration
for half-off!

PCB 352C65 Accelerometer

The Accelerometer came with a Calibration Data Card as shown here. It’s useable frequency range is 0.5
Hz – 10 kHz:
The accelerometer drive circuit is the same constant-current Dale used as shown here:

Built up the circuit into a little box as shown here:

The accelerometer was cemented to the bottom center of the Mounting Plate as shown here. The
ROHM accelerometer PCB is attached to the opposite side on an aluminum plate:
Here is the 10-Watt Power Amplifier I am using to drive the Subwoofer (with Function
Generator Input):

HP 467A Power Amplifier

Here is the Subwoofer Shaker moving the ROHM Accelerometer:

My associate and I did some preliminary testing and easily got +/- 3G acceleration at 100 Hz as reported
by the Y352C65. We also verified the acceleration using a ROHM accelerometer.