Aerospace

As the use of adhesively bonded joints and fittings has increased across many industries, the need for testing bond integrity has grown. Metal to metal bonded joints, sandwich constructions with various skin and core materials, bonded carbon fibre composite structures have all become important in manufacturing as well as in-service repair patches and adhesively bonded re-inforcements. The integrity of these bonds is critical to the quality of the final product. Conventional ultrasonic methods can be limited for these applications and so a variety of alternative methods have been developed to handle this range of material combination.

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies. Manufacturing components layer by layer with additive processes allows engineers to tailor form, weight, strength, stiffness and other properties to specific use cases.

Additive Manufacturing is driving a revolution in design and manufacturing. The technology lets us directly create parts from a solid drawing, using a wide and growing range of Additive Manufacturing methods. In the best cases, properties can compare favourably to conventional manufacturing processes. The various techniques are applicable to metals, polymers, and even composites and ceramics. Manufacturing components layer by layer to form the parts that have tight tolerances or are load-bearing may need some finish machining steps or heat treatment, but in some cases the parts can be used right out of the additive manufacturing system.

Testing witness coupons is particularly valuable as part of an additive production process. A small testing coupon is produced before and after a complicated build to make sure the system is performing generally as expected. There are several important elements. First, it may be challenging to get standard specimens machined out of additively manufactured components, so you might need to use subscale specimens or a different type of test.

Manufacturers of aircraft and space vehicles are focused on improving the fuel efficiency of turbine-powered jet engines. Increasing the efficiency of its fleet by even a small percentage, for example, would help an airline save billions of dollars in operating costs over time. To make this happen, new turbines must run hotter and require less cooling, which means disks, housings, blades and nozzles must be fabricated from or coated with materials that perform reliably at high temperatures for extended periods.

Our solutions help researchers characterize these superalloys, ceramic matrix composites and ceramic coatings with precision and repeatability. We understand the complexities of these tests, which typically require analysis of material behavior under exacting mechanical loads in high-temperature environments, and incorporate multiple methods of correlated data acquisition.

The following testing solutions are available for a growing list of high-temperature (up to 1000° C) materials tests: High-Cycle Fatigue (HCF), Low-Cycle Fatigue (LCF), Thermomechanical Fatigue (TMF) and more.
Higher-temperature solutions are also available.

Many new products entering the market today are based on new materials and processes. Among the various tests used to determine the characteristics of a material and its suitability for a given application, hardness testing is one of the most critical. Hardness is defined as the mean pressure a material will support. Hardness testing is typically undertaken to assess resistance to plastic deformation, a value of tremendous importance to the determination of part quality in a wide range of industries and applications.

Test Standard:

• Rockwell: BS EN ISO 6508-1, ASTM E18
• Brinell: BS EN ISO 6506-1, ASTM E10
• Vickers: BS EN ISO 6507-1, ASTM E384
• Knoop: BS EN ISO 4545-1, ASTM E384

Shearography is an optical Non-destructive testing method that provides fast and accurate information about internal anomalies in different materials. Sherography is being extensively used in production, research and development and in-field within the aerospace, automotive, marine and wind industry.

Loading Conditions:

• Thermal
• Vacuum
• Vibration
• Acoustic
• Mechanical

Applications:
The main applications for shearography are for quality assurance of composite and other materials. Depending on the material strength and depth of defects within a sample, Shearography can detect most discontinuities that occur in composite structures, including disbonds; delaminations; cracked core; crushed core; kissing bonds; wrinkling; fluid ingresses; porosity; cracks; repair defects; and impact damage (BVIDs). Additional structural information such as ply drops, bulkheads, overlaps, splices, stringers, ribs can also be detected.

he Digital 3D Image Correlation System is an optical measuring device for true full-field, non-contact, three-dimensional measurement of shape, displacements and strains on components and structures made from almost any material. The system is used for determination of three-dimensional material properties in tensile, torsion, bending or combined tests. In addition, deformation and strain analysis can be applied to fatigue tests, fracture mechanics, FEA validation, and much more.

Applications:

• Advanced materials (CFRP, wood, fiber injected PE, metal foam, rubber, …)
• Component testing (shape, displacements, strains,…)
• Material testing (Young’s Modulus, Poisson’s Ratio, Elasto-Plastic Behaviour)
• Fracture mechanics FEA validation
• High-Speed applications (dynamic measurements, transient events)