© November 2018 | IJIRT | Volume 5 Issue 6 | ISSN: 2349-6002
IJIRT 147229 INTERNATIONAL JO URNAL OF INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN TECHNOLOGY 100
Design and Development of Drop Test Rig & Test
Analysis of Handheld Electronic Devices
Shubham Agnihotri
1
, Shaunak Vaze
2
, Rajat Nampalliwar
3
, Dr. S.T. Chavan
4
1,2,3
Student, Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Pune
4
Professor, Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Pune
Abstract- Portable electronic devices suffer from
impact-induced failure in usage. These products must
pass drop or impact tests before shipment, so that there
are no grievances at the customer end due to poor life of
the product. Hence, drop or impact performance is one
of the important concerns in product design. Because of
the small size of these kind of electronics products, it is
very expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to
conduct drop tests to detect the failure mechanism and
identify their drop behaviors. A large number of
sensors are required in the extremely small space of the
electronic device, so as to obtain sufficient data for
failure analysis. To overcome this hurdle, a combination
of only a few sensors, a rudimentary test rig, and finite
element analysis with the help of software can be used
to study device behavior during impact. Recent work
has shown that due to the multiple impacts that result
during an accidental drop of a portable electronic
product, the propensity for damage to the product can
be significantly higher than in a single impact. When
viewed in light of these findings, conventional methods
for drop-testing of portable products, either constrained
or free, suffer from drawbacks. In the former, the
object being tested is not allowed to move naturally
during impact, and in the latter, it is difficult to control
the orientation of the object at impact and to
instrument it. In this project, a new method of drop-
testing has been designed, that combines the advantages
of the constrained and free methods, without their
drawbacks. It is proposed that the object being tested be
suspended onto a guided drop-table in the precise
desired impact orientation. The test device, drop test
and correlation of analysis to test data are illustrated in
the report.
Index Terms- Analysis, Design, Drop, Handheld
electronic devices, Impact, Test Rig.
I. INTRODUCT ION
With many products, it is not a specific technological
feature any more that will guarantee a competitive
advantage, but more often success is based on other
product attributes such as the selected feature set,
total quality, design and usability of the product.
Besides for these product specific features, the
company’s skills in different business operations and
strategies, such as in R&D, product development,
manufacturing and logistics, play a major role in
overall business success. Hence, we come to what
has become one of the most important factors in
product development; which is functionality. A
device must function properly and offer the customer
the same services throughout its life cycle. Now that
we have established the importance of product
functionality in deciding its success in the market, it
is important to look at the ways in which said
functionality can be tested or verified before the
product is launched into the market. This may be
related to its physical attributes; which is mainly
studied and discussed in this report, or it may be
related to its software attributes. The physical
attributes of a handheld electronic device include the
device housing, its electronic circuits and display
screen. Our testing and analysis has been focused on
the housing level analysis of the device- the reason
being, the first point of contact for transmission of
damaging forces is always the housing. How well the
housing of the device handles external forces decides
whether or not the internal electronic circuits, or
external feedback devices will continue to function.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Constrained Drop Testing
Constrained drop testing is by far the most common,
and it is based on sound fundamentals, and is part of
many standardized test protocols. In constrained drop
testing, the object being tested is clamped rigidly to a
heavy table that is guided along vertical rods (or