This paper presents the results of experimental tests carried out on an electromagnetic shaker where the excited element was a specimen with additional weight attached to the slip table. The load was random with a different kurtosis parameter value, i.e., it was performed for non-Gaussian loads. The experiment was accompanied by basic fatigue calculations in the frequency domain and their verification with experimental results. A significant decrease in fatigue life was found to take place with an increase in kurtosis and the maintenance of the same standard deviation of the specimen load. The fatigue effect, caused by the deviation from the normal distribution that was described by the kurtosis parameter, on the fatigue life of aluminum alloy 6082 was presented. An analysis revealed the different amplitude probability distributions for the loading signal and the recorded deformation signal. It was concluded that there was a lack of sensitivity of the numerical model to the change in the kurtosis parameter of the distribution of random loads.
Keywords: electromagnetic shaker; fatigue tests; kurtosis.