Materials testing for military applications at TWI

By Chris Manger

It is essential that components and joints in all military vehicles and equipment applications are fit-for-purpose. The military industry sector demands very high levels of reliability and performance, perhaps more than any other industry. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the many factors influencing structural integrity behaviour is necessary. TWI has the expertise to assure the integrity of your component in-service.

Compression after impact test on a carbon fibre composite panel

The mechanical testing facilities at TWI offer a very extensive and flexible service, able to fulfil all of your testing needs. Our capabilities range from small bench-top machines, suitable for testing small samples such as Clearweld^® fabric joints, to drop-weight rigs, capable of large-scale drop weight tests on composite or welded steel structures. Routine tests are also available through The Test House Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of TWI). TWI has extensive experience with a large range of materials, including fabrics, polymers, composites and ferrous and non-ferrous metals.

The TWI test facilities are summarised below:

Wide plate testing - flexible large plate rigs capable of up to 40 MN static loads and 20MN fatigue loads
Impact testing - several drop-weight machines offering capabilities for full instrumentation with maximum energies ranging from 1J to 73 kJ, drop heights of up to 10.4m with both low and high temperature capabilities
Quasi-static testing - a large array of machines offering capabilities for testing at load levels of several Newtons to 10 MN
Fatigue testing - machines capable of cyclic loading from the Kilo-Newton range up to 1 MN
Creep laboratory - servo-hydraulic and lever arm dead weight machines with temperature capabilities of up to 1000°C for testing of both metallic and polymer based materials

Biaxial wide plate test

These technical resources are backed by a team of highly qualified research engineers and technicians who carry out tests to meet the latest quality and health and safety requirements. Our team also has considerable experience in the design and construction of specialist testing equipment or fixtures.

The extensive test services are also backed by facilities and expertise in fracture mechanics, non-destructive testing, residual stress measurement, probabilistic analysis and numerical modelling. Please contact TWI for any further information.