Testing Capabilities on a High-Speed Testing Machine

By using two high-speed testing machines at IVW, short-term dynamic tensile, shear and compression tests can be carried out at test speeds of up to 20 m/s, at temperatures of -100°C to 250°C and a maximum force of 160 kN.

Composite materials, in particular continuous fiber reinforced polymer matrix composites, are increasingly used in safety-relevant structural components due to their excellent mechanical properties, high energy absorption capacity and lightweight potential. For the virtual design and calculation of these components, short-term dynamic material parameters are required which are determined at high test speeds or strain rates.

For this purpose, two servo-hydraulic high-speed testing machines (HTM 5020 & 16020) from ZwickRoell are available at IVW, with which test speeds in a range of 0.1 mm/s to 20 m/s can be realized in tensile, shear and compression testing of specimens and components. The test force up to 160 kN is recorded using piezo force sensors that are specially designed for high dynamic loading. In addition, temperature-variant tests in a range of -100°C to 250°C can be carried out with a temperature chamber. The maximum achievable deformation of 250 mm is recorded by a digital high-speed camera system (maximum recording frequency of one million images per second). Strain evaluation is performed via optical deformation analysis. Specially developed test setups (e.g. transverse force support for compression tests) allow a flexible response to changing test parameters, and different specimen dimensions (e.g. single fiber tensile tests) and geometries can be tested. These tests are used to investigate the influence of strain rate (up to 200 1/s) and temperature on mechanical material properties, which find their way into material and simulation models.

Funding:

The high-speed testing machine HTM 16020 was purchased as part of the "TTC - Thermoplastic Composites Technology Center" project and is also used in project “Chara-TPC – Establishing a Material Characterization Center for Thermoplastic Composites (TPC) in Rhineland-Palatinate“. Both projects arefunded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Ministry of Economics, Transport, Agriculture, and Viticulture (MWVLW) (funding reference 84005413).