Aerospace testing provider Element Materials Technology has added an Indentation Plastometer from Plastometrex to its metal testing capabilities to its core service offering.
Element is using the novel technology to offer failure analysis and complex-part-testing services. The company provides testing, inspection and certification services, including the mechanical testing of metallic materials in several sectors including aerospace.
Manfred Feyer, general Manager at Element’s Hamburg, Germany laboratory, said, “The Indentation Plastometer enables us to offer an entirely new method for determining the strength of metallic materials and metallic components.
“This technology has a number of attributes that will allow us to offer new material insights into the properties of difficult-to-test parts, while also supporting failure analysis investigations across a wide range of industries.”
Plastometrex’s technology uses a new testing method called Profilometry-based Indentation Plastometry (PIP), that combines bespoke testing hardware with advanced numerical methods and optimisation algorithms.
The PIP method can extract gold-standard mechanical property data (stress-strain curves) from an automated indentation test in under three minutes, without the need to machine standard tensile testing coupons. The technology can also test very small samples sizes, enabling users to generate data on samples that they couldn’t otherwise test.
Plastometrex has been spun out from research conducted at The University of Cambridge over the last ten years. Element invested into Plastometrex in July 2020 from its US$10 million Element Innovates fund.
James Dean, CEO of Plastometrex said, “Element continues to be a strong and supportive partner of Plastometrex and our technologies, and we are delighted to be working with them first as an investor and now as a customer. We will be supporting the team at Element by helping them to deploy our technology in ways that bring value to its diverse customer base.”