Dear Colleagues,

Many mechanical applications require very specific testing of components and materials, such as turbomachinery, which undergoes fretting fatigue or dynamic vibrations, full-scale testing of large components, or gears of any size and other mechanical power transmission components, etc. Each of these applications usually require a dedicated test rig or at least the development of a piece of equipment to be combined with an already-existing testing machine. Most of the time, these testing facilities need to be both conceived and then designed and commissioned. This activity is usually quite demanding, not only in terms of budget, but also quite challenging from a design point of view. Moreover, these testing machines usually require a significant electronic and control part which needs to be interfaced and properly tuned with the mechanical devices.

This Special Issue aims to comprehensively showcase all the steps of the design of any of these testing devices which are usually conceptualized from scratch or just inspired from an already existing piece of equipment which may be however quite different in terms of specifications and performances. Both the mechanical design and/or the control systems are interesting topics of this Special Issue. The experimental results obtained can be either presented or just omitted if it is not of interest; however, the experimental implementation, at least preliminary, is highly recommended to be presented.

We finally hope that, with your papers, we will succeed in encouraging students and researchers to exchange ideas in order to develop other solutions and even more innovative mechanical testing devices.

Prof. Dr. Ciro Santus
Dr. Massimiliano De Agostinis
Guest Editors

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• mechanical testing
• fatigue design
• finite element analysis
• vibration monitoring
• optimization
• electrical actuation
• safety design
• commissioning