Test Equipment

Most of the test equipment (owned by the US Army) is manufactured by MTS.

Load Frame

The load frame is a 55 kip model 810 Floor-Standing System. It has enough adjustable height to test specimens from 0 to 6 feet. The machine can be controlled by: actuator position/displacement, force, and gauge extension, or any combination. The actuator is 4" in diameter with a 8" stroke, and is servo-hydraulically controlled with a 0.00005" resolution.

Load Cells

I generally use one of two load cells for the testing. The larger is a 30 kip with 0.05lb resolution and the smaller, more used, is a 5 kip with a 0.0005 lb resolution.

Extensometers

Extensometers used include gauge lengths of: 0.300", 0.500", 1.000", 1.400" and 2.000". All extenseometers COD gauges have 0.000005" resouliotions.

Environmental Chamber

The environmental chamber is a 5,236 cubic inch insulated "box" that can surround all test fixtures. This chamber can regulate parts from -200 degrees Fahrenheit, up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit, using a NIST traceable thermocouple. Cooling is controlled with liquid nitrogen. The liquid nitrogen is metered in and splashed onto a slinger behind a radiator type of device. The heating is accomplished with built-in electrical resistance heating. The atmosphere is vigorously circulated in the chamber via a fan. All temperatures are regulated to +- 0.5F

Other measuring Equipment

All test specimen measurements were measured with digital equipment. All test equipment is calibrated. The measuring equipment is measured via cryogenically treated gauge blocks calibrated yearly by the Redstone Arsenal Army testing labs. The load cells, actuator, and extenseometers are calibrated by MTS on a yearly contract basis. Last calibration was preformed in July, 2003.

How all the data comes together

All test loads and actuator positions are controlled via a MTS Test Star Digital Controller. This interface is in turn controlled by a computer running MTS Test Works 4 material testing software. The rate of data sampling is adjustable. For all tests on this web site, I sample at a rate of 10 Hz, or 10,000 samples per second. (That would make for some nice thrust curves!) All data points are dumped into a database and cannot be accessed or changed except by the software to produce results. This means once the data is collected, it cannot be changed or altered in any way.

I collect data for each test that is not posted on this web site. Most of this data is way beyond what one needs for building rockets and is beyond the scope of this project. However, if you would like to see some of it, drop me a line and I can send it to you for discussion.

The entire tensile testing system was tested by ASTM in a "round robin" blind performance study in December, 2003 and passed all inspection criteria.

Other test Equipment

My lab has tremendous materials testing capabilities. Other testing capabilities include cyclic fatigue, fatigue crack growth, impact testing, bending moment testing, complete microscopic and metallographic investigation, and 32 ranges of hardness testing.