Page 10 - Fort Huachuca Scout 5-29-15

10A The Scout FRIDAY, MAY 29, 2015

Environmental testing helps Sold

Story and photos by Natalie Lakosil are probable. ed to make sure the contents wouldn’t In addition to testing at the ETF o
Staff Writer Dynamic shakers help the techs find a rupture and expel through the sides of Fort Huachuca, staff members test
the bags,” said Lemaire. “The require- other governmental test facilities, com
Testing at the U.S. Army Electronic fatigue relationship. “We attach the test ment was to have an altitude setting of mercial facilities, and at vendor develop
Proving Ground Environmental Test Fa- item to dynamic shakers, introduce either approximately 8,000 feet, which is cabin mental sites within the U.S. and Canada
cility has been helping Soldiers and ci- a sign sweep or a random bandwidth floor pressure with an envelope of air on the
vilians for years and they might not even noise,” said Terry Lemaire, task leader, outside around 40,000 feet, and then All of these machines and tests ho
realize it. Mantech. transition from 8,000 to 40,000 in less the same goal of being able to certify
than 100 milliseconds.” piece of equipment for the government o
The USAEPG Environmental Test If the equipment was to be mounted
Facility, or ETF, conducts dynamic and on a helicopter, the team can replicate The facility can also test for salt-fog Terry Lemaire, task leader, Mantech, compar
climatic testing on handheld, manpack, that helicopter’s vibration signature by corrosion in their testing booth. It can vi- U.S. Army Electronic Proving Ground Enviro
palletized and vehicular C4ISR (Com- introducing random noise and different sually indication how salt will effect the
munications, Command Control and components, Lemaire said. “What we are equipment, and is vital for those working A salt fog corrosion testing booth allows per
Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance looking to see is will this vibration fa- near the ocean. effect equipment.
and Reconissance)-based systems. Some tigue any of the components and damage
of the tests last days while others can last it, that’s primarily what we do,” he added. “We qualify it basically, make sure the A dynamic shaker demonstrates how fatigue
up to a full year. device does what [the customer wants] in synchronization with the shaker and allow
One unique machine the ETF houses it to do and what the builder says it will
According to the USAEPG ETF hand- is a machine designed to test mobile hu- do,” said Herald Vahle, ETF manager.
out, “the environmental test facility con- man remains containers. “A body bag or The facility is staffed with two govern-
ducts tests based on the whole life cycle coffin goes in it and the customer wanted ment electrical engineers and five Man-
process in simulated environments. Com- to know if the body bags would survive tech technical staff members.
plete climatic and dynamic test capabili- an explosive decompression event, want-
ties are available for testing to military
and other environmental standards. The Nett Warrior equipment is tested for its functionality in a hot/cold temperature chamber.
ETF is adequately equipped with a vari-
ety of test support equipment to monitor Clay Bryan, field engineer, counts fungus under a microscope. The test verifies that the samples
all test variables to provide real time or of fungus are accurate and suitable to use.
post test analysis.”

The ETF is capable of testing equip-
ment in temperatures reaching 250 de-
grees below zero with liquid nitrogen, but
typically tests at 100 below zero, and tests
as high in 450 degree Fahrenheit, in the fa-
cility’s high/low temperature chamber.

“Some of the components, we’re not
sure how they will perform under ex-
treme environmental conditions, so in
this case we make it very cold or very
hot to check the behavioral changes we
might see,” said Jim Homer, Nett War-
rior test representative. As an example,
this [Nett Warrior] system which is like a
cell phone might go into a self-protective
mode, but we need to know that so we can
train the Soldiers, prepare them for how
the equipment will react while they’re in
Afghanistan or Iraq or some environment
where it might get very hot or very cold.”

Other tests the facility can perform are
altitude tests. During these tests, tech-
nicians are able to remove all of the air
from the altitude chamber as well as ap-
ply pressure to simulate various altitudes
and see how the equipment will perform.

The ETF also houses a fungus lab,
where technicians can grow fungi and see
if specific ones will eat away at the equip-
ment or have no effect. The techs can
also run environmental tests with blow-
ing wind, rain, sand and dust to look for
abrasions caused by sand, or to make sure
the dust will not jam the equipment and
to see if the equipment will still operate
in an environment where those elements