Testing offers vital insights into product performance and enables engineers to determine a material’s suitability as well as the integrity of manufacturing processes as part of quality control initiatives. This article gives examples of testing for high-performance eyewear, composite snowboards, and motorcycle apparel.

Engineering departments at universities across the U.S. are using materials testing to advance scientific research. Five innovations under development are presented here, including work on advanced materials to improve building integrity and to enhance medical treatments.

Materials testing systems must be robust and flexible, capable of determining the mechanical properties of a broad range of materials and components ranging from metals to composites and from plastics to natural, bio-based materials. This article provides an overview of electromechanical testing systems, servohydraulic systems, and vibrophores for high cycle fatigue testing.

Automation, ease of use, safety, and data integrity are driving changes in the mechanical testing industry, and they rely heavily on the software platform used to control the testing system. This article describes five of the most common trends: (1) Barcoding, (2) Integration with laboratory information management systems and databases, (3) Data integrity, (4) System and software usability, and (5) Enhanced safety features.

Recent advances in hardware and software provide materials testers with improved productivity and enhanced capabilities. This article describes some innovations in testing composites and aluminum alloy formability and new capabilities in digital image correlation and testing machine software.

Many companies are revisiting their decision to bring materials testing in-house. This article reviews quality, time, and cost factors involved in analyzing in-house versus outsourced testing approaches.

Consumer demand for greater fuel efficiency and a changing regulatory environment have stimulated substantial interest in alternative materials for passenger vehicles. Automotive manufacturers now have a wide variety of choices available, ranging from various grades of steel and aluminum to the most advanced lightweight composite materials. This article describes testing innovations introduced to keep pace with the use of new materials in automobiles.

Software specifically designed for materials testing environments and quality control laboratories offers a solution to many of today’s challenges, including lightweighting initiatives across multiple industries.This article describes commercial software available for managing test programs and regulatory compliance.

Creep strain behavior during cooling was investigated by physical simulation, giving insight into the relationship of flow stress behavior and microstructure as a function of temperature and cooling rate.

The materials testing industry must follow market trends, keeping up with both increased use of nonmetallic materials in fields formerly dominated by metals, as well as new and challenging metal alloys. This article reviews some of the testing challenges involved with advanced materials.

Finite element representations of crash test dummies are widely used in the simulation of vehicle safety systems. The biofidelity of such models is strongly dependent on the accurate representation of the nonlinear behavior of constituent rubber, plastic, and foam materials. This article presents a simulation workflow in which material parameters are more easily optimized and demonstrates its use in the calibration of a viscoelastic model for the behavior of rubber-like materials in a side-impact dummy.

The utility of cluster ion beams for x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis is just beginning to be explored, making a range of materials accessible that previously could not be analyzed. When combined with a monatomic source, these cluster ion beams will become an essential tool for any materials analysis laboratory. A new monatomic and gas cluster ion source for XPS instruments uses argon gas cluster sputtering to clean surfaces and create depth profiles for a growing class of advanced materials that include both hardened inorganic and softer organic materials.

For sports and recreation equipment manufacturers and sports medicine clinicians, mechanical testing is essential to optimize material performance, minimize injury, and improve recovery outcomes. This article describes some of the specialized tests used for sports equipment.

Resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS) is an emerging ultrasonic measurement technique. By measuring the natural vibrational frequencies of test samples, RUS can determine Young's modulus, shear modulus, and Poisson's ratio for isotropic materials. By comparing the vibrational spectra of a test sample to those obtained from a standard, it is possible to infer the causes of the differences (if any) and detect various part defects, such as size variations, cracks, and pores. Thanks to advances in computer technology, codes and software are now available for data reduction, analysis, and interpretation. This article addresses fundamentals of the technology and applications in research and industry.

In Germany, the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) is addressing challenges in the implementation of additive manufacturing on the industrial landscape for safety-critical applications. This article provides an overview of BAM’s activities in additive manufacturing with a focus on safety (both for applications and the environment) and AM technology innovation for a wide range of materials and manufacturing locations.

In steel production, an automated particle workflow can increase the efficiency and statistical relevance of nanosized precipitate analyses, resulting in increased productivity and accuracy.

The second article in this series looks at materials testing, microstructural evaluation, mechanical testing, and residual stress and distortion using the DANTE Controlled Gas Quenching process.

Non-contacting extensometry offers a wide range of benefits in materials tests. Depending on the specific application, non-contacting extensometry may be the only option for strain measurement.

Existing strain measurement techniques do not offer enough information about how failures occur, so alternative methods are needed. One technique involves using digital image correlation (DIC) to measure full field strain over the entire material surface. DIC works by capturing a series of images throughout a test and analyzing them afterwards.

Measuring material properties is disproportionately more complex for fiber-reinforced composites than for materials such as metals and plastics. It is further complicated by more than 150 composite test standards in use around the globe. This article assesses the challenges involved in testing fiber-reinforced composites and presents a rational approach for specimen preparation, handling, and fixturing that can simplify testing and improve throughput without sacrificing measurement accuracy.