To acquire greater awareness of the material properties of the scales and skeleton of a Polypterus senegalus fish, Dr. Emily Standen and her team required a testing machine with low-force capabilities that could also carry out bending and torsional tests, as well as facilitating their in-house 3D-printed tooling.
Our research requires a testing machine that can handle very tiny samples and be fitted with a wide range of tooling we design ourselves. And we also need torsion capabilities, which are critical to our analysis of the change in length when a torsional force is applied.
Dr. Emily Standen
After consultation with ZwickRoell, Standen and her team selected a 5 kN zwickiLine single-column testing system fitted with a torsion drive.
The zwickiLine is an extremely flexible and expandable testing system that can be customized to meet the requirements of almost any low-force application. And it was clear from the start that this lab needed flexibility above all else.
Mehdi Dargahi, Regional Sales Manager for Canada, ZwickRoell in North America.
Once ZwickRoell Services and Support installed the device, it was only a matter of hours before the research team had their test up and running. The machine is easy to use, and the integrated testing software, testXpert III, is extremely intuitive. We love it.
Dr. Emily Standen
Image Credit: ZwickRoell GmbH Co. KG
The team programmed their test environment just once by presetting with the System Configuration Builder feature and subsequently saving all the necessary testing system and safety settings, including crosshead position, fixture separation and sensor configuration.
Prior to each test, the saved configuration of the system inspects the connected sensors, and the test commences only once the parameters are in accordance with the requirements. Saved configurations can be quickly restored even if after selecting a different test arrangement.
This means it is viable to run tests with corresponding settings, securing reproducible test conditions. With the System Configuration Builder, user errors are limited when the operator moves between testing environments ensuring safe operation for the user, machine and specimen.
Dr. Standen and her team are only just getting started surveying the numerous testing possibilities offered by their zwickiLine.
From a comparative and evolutionary biomechanics perspective, the laboratory conducts significant work while providing opportunities for investigating how performance changes as anatomy evolves.
Testing plans in the future include modeling variables in material properties that affect the flight mechanics of animals and evaluating how they, in return, influence the animal’s survival.
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by ZwickRoell GmbH Co. KG.
For more information on this source, please visit ZwickRoell GmbH Co. KG