Mechanical Testing Techniques for Composites

Tuesday 17th September 2024

Who should attend?

This course is recommended for managers and technicians with responsibility for QA testing of composite materials and components, designers, specifiers and sales personnel.

Course objectives:

• Combining classroom based theory with practical demonstrations for the most common mechanical tests; ranging from simple flexural testing to the more complex testing such as compression testing.
• This course covers everything participants would expect from an introductory training event including; defining what a composite material is, the common terms used in mechanical testing and why mechanical testing is carried out. It also looks at the theory of why the specimens used for testing are the shape and size they are and how to optimise a test setup to ensure reliable, repeatable and accurate results.

Course modules:

Introduction to advanced composites

• What are composites.
• General characteristics.
• Fibres and matrices: glass fibres, carbon fibres, aramid fibres, polyester fibres and others (short and long in other composite classes).
• Brief comparison of mechanical properties and other special properties.

Fatigue and Creep testing

• Best practice: tension-tension fatigue, flexural fatigues, interlaminar shear fatigue, torsional fatigue, compression fatigue.

Tensile testing

• Best practice.
• Materials and specimen preparation.
• Grips and extensometers.
• Overall test setup and procedure.
• Typical stress-strain plots.
• Calculation of key tensile parameters including tensile modulus, tensile strength, ultimate tensile strain etc.
• Typical problems encountered with composite test specimens.

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