A light-weight and wide-bandwidth vibration exciter operating in dynamic overload environments was developed to conduct combined simulations of dynamic overload and time-varying vibration. A piezoelectric-hydraulic series hybrid vibration excitation method and corresponding configuration are proposed to solve the problem of narrow bandwidth with light weight or heavy weight with wide bandwidth. A six-element piezoelectric parallel excitation module was designed and the corresponding precise assembly technology was built， achieving a parallel excitation efficiency of 74.2%. A hydraulic embedded centering method is also proposed for the hydraulic actuator to operate in dynamic overload environments. In addition， a hydraulic excitation module with a novel cylinder-in-cylinder configuration was developed. The frequency-division control method for series hybrid excitation systems was designed based on a frequency divider， with the hydraulic and piezoelectric vibration excitation modules working coordinately and loading with equilibrium. Combining force balance control with zero-displacement feedback compensation， a centering control method was designed for the hydraulic excitation module. Thus， precise centering in dynamic overloads was accomplished. Two time-varying vibration control methods， namely variable gain and long-duration waveform replication methods， are proposed， and the integrative control system was developed as well. Performance tests show that the developed hydraulic-piezoelectric series hybrid vibration exciter features excitation abilities of acceleration over 6 g_rms and frequency band covering 10-2 000 Hz for a payload over 50 kg in centrifugal overload exceeding 60 g and overload rate exceeding 15 g/s， respectively. The exciter was installed on a dynamic centrifuge and applied in a number of tests for inertial sensors， assemblies， and systems with good load control effects. In comparison to real flight tests， the dynamic overload-vibration simulation technique presented in this paper provides a more efficient and more economical laboratory approach for testing functional properties of guidance and control systems of aircrafts and spacecrafts， especially for large sample test data accumulation.