Speciality chemicals firm Lanxess has expanded its Material Testing Centre for high-tech thermoplastics in Dormagen, Germany, with two Kappa Multistation creep testing machines, engineered by Messphysik Materials Testing GmbH, the Zwick Roell Group’s competence centre for creep testing. These machines can be used to test how Lanxess’s Durethan polyamides, Pocan polyesters and TEPEX continuous fibre-reinforced high-performance composites deform over time when exposed to constant mechanical load.

The characteristic material data obtained from these tests is used in simulation tools to predict the long-term behaviour of corresponding components under continuous mechanical and thermal load. The two machines can perform not only creep tests according to ISO 899-1, but also relaxation tests and tests with user-defined load profiles comprising several load sequences, and they can do so at temperatures of up to 200°C.

“These tests are part of our HiAnt customer services, and we conduct them in accordance with the needs of our development partners, but also for our own projects,” explains Dr. Marcel Brandt, technical head of the technical centre.

The two new testing machines cover a load range of up to 10 kN per sample. Each one is equipped with five test axes installed in a temperature-controlled chamber. The test axes can be controlled individually. “This way, we can perform five independent tests, such as creep and relaxation tests, right next to one another at identical temperatures, which saves space, money and time,” Brandt says. Elongation of the sample under load is measured optically (non-contact) by a high-resolution video extensometer mounted on each test axis.

Lanxess says it has steadily expanded its fully climate-controlled Material Testing Centre in recent years. For example, it now is equipped with servo-hydraulic Zwick testing machines for dynamic fatigue tests that help to characterise fatigue behaviour, and for high-speed tensile tests to determine material data for crash simulation.

The MTC further has testing machines for quasi-static tensile, flexural, shear and compression testing, also from Zwick. They are designed for testing the entire product range of impact-modified, unreinforced material grades for blow moulding applications, highly reinforced compounds, and continuous fibre-reinforced composites for use in highly stressed structural components.