Effect of edge and internal point support of a printed circuit board undervibration

This paper presents an investigation into the vibration of a PCB that is su pported on its three edges by two wedge retainers and a plug-in connector U sing a vibration test fixture to couple the PCB structure to an electromagn etic shaker, experiments were conducted to determine its dynamic response. The wedge retainer and connector are modeled as simply supported condition with appropriate rotational spring stiffnesses along their respective edges . It is found that these supports behave somewhere between the simply suppo rted and clamped boundary conditions and provide a percent fixity of 39.5 p ercent more than the classical simply supported case. It is further found t hat a single internal point constraint that would yield the maximum fundame ntal frequency is located at the intersection of the nodal increasing the P CB's fundamental frequency from 68.4 Hz to 146.9 Hz, or 115 percent higher.