Long Term/Polymer Durability Testing
Polymer materials are viscoelastic in nature. Their properties are highly
time, temperature and stress dependant. The significance of this is often
overlooked at the design stage.
As a simple demonstration of the significance of this, the long term fatigue
strength of polycarbonate is only 14% of the short term tensile strength quoted
on manufacturers data sheets.
For any engineering component subjected either long term static or dynamic loads
or elevated temperatures a thorough understanding of the long term properties of
the material is central to guaranteeing the durability of the final product.
ipolytech can provide the necessary design data to allow
realistic design of structural polymer components through:
- fatigue
testing
- tensile creep
- compressive
creep
- torsional
creep
- hydrostatic creep
- thermally
accelerated ageing & testing
- oven ageing
Please contact us
to discuss your specific long term test requirements.
Design data obtained from test pieces
provides vital information during the design phase. However, such tests
are based on ideal test pieces. The long term durability of a component
will can also be compromised by polymer flow and specific moulding conditions.
Therefore, the final stage of design
for long term durability must be to run accelerated tests on pre production
components. IPT have the experience to define and run such test programmes
to confirm the long term durability of your designs.
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