Pickin' up Good Vibrations
Wayne Tustin travels the world explaining how and why things shake
by Frank Nelson
Published on 5/9/05 at Business News section of the Santa Barbara News-Press
"Reprinted with permission from the Santa Barbara News-Press."
"Ask me about VIBRATION" booms an outsized lapel badge on Wayne Tustin's sports coat. It's a quirky, irresistible invitation, perhaps even a little risque, but after almost 50 years studying things that vibrate, Mr. Tustin, 83 this month, is without doubt the man to ask.
He's also the founder and president of Equipment Reliability Institute, a Santa Barbara company he and his wife, Shirley, own and run from their house on the Mesa.
Mr. Tustin describes ERI as a specialized engineering school. "We focus on the reliability and durability of equipment, from submarines to space," he says.
Indeed, almost any kind of transport, machine, structure or device that is subject to shock or vibration, whether from the effects of air, water or some sort of solid impact, or which might corrode or fail for any reason, is of interest to Mr. Tustin.
He moved to Santa Barbara in 1961 and ran the Tustin Institute of Technology, which he sold in 1990 with the idea of retiring. For a while he was an independent consultant but when his five-year noncompete agreement ended, he launched ERI.
Today his main role is education and much of his time is spent lecturing and conducting courses, passing on some of the knowledge that he's been accumulating at least since he joined Boeing in 1948.
On Thursday he'll be in NŸrnberg, Germany, delivering a paper at the International Conference of the Confederation of European Environmental Engineering Societies; next month he's back in Germany running a course.
His courses are typically held either onsite for large companies or clients like the military, or they are open courses, like one in Santa Barbara in August, where people come from a variety of companies or backgrounds.
Courses often combine access to laboratory stress-testing equipment, where the effects of violent shaking and impact can be observed and measured.
This leads into the area of failure analysis, where potential flaws in a product can be unearthed before it goes to market and then rectified by the makers.
"We learn from failures," says Mr. Tustin. "Hopefully in the laboratory, sometimes in the field."
He recently conducted a three-day training course for the U.S. Army at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, looking at the effects of vibration and shock on tanks, Jeeps and other land vehicles, helicopters, large guns and related military hardware.
The focus was on the shock and vibration caused by elements such as the terrain, vehicle engines and guns firing, and how these things can affect the performance, reliability and durability of equipment.
For those not able to attend such courses in person, ERI offers a distance-learning option. Currently about eight people are working through 31 lessons on CD, e-mailing in assignments and writing their theses, a program generally taking about six months.
In addition to his work as teacher and instructor, Mr. Tustin also sits at the center of a nationwide network of associates - "a loose affiliation of reliability specialists" - ready to act as course instructors or consultants when practical problems arise.
Especially interesting or challenging cases, or ones close to Santa Barbara, Mr. Tustin may take on himself; others he farms out to any of about 20 specialists on his books who then work with the client, negotiate and complete the contract, and then remit 10 percent commission to ERI.
Mr. Tustin admits that the courses he runs are not cheap. A three-day course costs around $2,000, although Mr. Tustin maintains it's worthwhile.
"In my narrow niche, I'm the best," he says.
The course fee also includes a copy of Mr. Tustin's third and latest book, "Random Vibration & Shock Testing," which is to be released this week at $250 a copy.