Traditional vibration testing using response accelerometers and hard mounting the space equipment or satellite to a shaker could result in overtesting, destruction, overdesign and/or excessive cost/schedule impact if the unit under test is broken.

Overtesting failures can be eliminated by limiting the vibratory force to that predicted for the actual flight. “Force limiting” automatically notches the acceleration at a test item's resonances, by measuring and limiting the reaction force between the test item and the shaker table. FLV testing replicates the test article's resonant response for the actual flight mounting condition.