14 DAY TRIAL // The US Army has just started a new weapons testing program at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Fortunately, they didn't give guns to students, instead they used the Highly Accelerated Life Testing chamber in a new laboratory.
This testing chamber is going to be used by the university to assist the military in examining the durability of the weapons the American soldiers are equipped with. More precisely, they will simulate various extreme environments which can accelerate the normal life cycle of the weapons.
Determining which parts are more likely to malfunction with age is a critical part of the weapons testing performed by the Army, as well as observing in various combat theaters, from the scorching heat and the sandstorms of the desert, to the wetlands and jungles and the ever frozen arctic regions.
"The goal of the chamber is simply to try and break these components," said Chris Sautter, the interim director for UAH's Center for Material Research.
It may sound like child's play, but knowing when and under which conditions a component is likely to stop is a difficult task; that is why the HALT chamber takes components through temperature swings from minus 100 degrees to more than 200 degrees Celsius and performs sudden changes in humidity, from zero to 85 percent.
Other applications are checking for the gravity resistance and this implies varying the vibration from zero to 100gs RMS (gravity root mean squared), a means of measuring the level of vibration in terms of "g" that the weapon can resist.
Maj. Gen. Jim Pillsbury said that by improving the reliability of the weapons the soldiers use, the program is directly helping these soldiers, who will be able to better use their weapons on the battlefield.
Actually, he didn't use so many words, he just said the weapons could better be used to kill more "bad guys."