Imatek has recently completed the installation of a Drop Weight Tear Tester (DWTT) system at Rautaruukki (Ruukki) in Finland. Ruukki is a major supplier of metal based components to the construction and mechanical engineering industries. The company operates in 24 countries and employs 14,600 people worldwide.
Net sales in 2007 totalled EUR 3.9 billion. Ruukki employs around 220 people in it’s R&D facilities in Finland, Russia and Poland. The Rautaruukki R&D facility in Finland is the focus of Ruukki’s tube product development and houses the new Imatek DWTT machine.
The Imatek DWT40-25 replaces an older 10KJ pendulum machine and is being used by Ruukki for measuring the fracture characteristics and fracture ductility of steel used in the manufacture of large diameter steel linepipe for the oil and gas industry. The system enables specimens to be tested in accordance with API 5L3 recommended practice. Ruukki are involved in the development of higher strength X-steels and will be using the machine to test up to X70 grade steel.
The Imatek DWT 40-25 machine provides an impact energy of up to 24,500J and can be fully instrumented. The benefit of instrumentation is that it allows the crack initiation and propagation energies for the specimen to be determined. This is proven to be a much better indicator of the in-use performance of the steel. A Korean university in conjunction with POSCO, another major steel manufacturer based in Korea, has recently produced a technical paper in support of this. The Imatek instrumented DWTT also offers a much more repeatable test method than previous systems, where the operator had to determine whether the specimen was ductile or brittle by visual examination alone.
The DWTT range from Imatek is extremely robust and stands up to the rigours of high energy testing to provide high reliability with a minimum of downtime.
The system has a pneumatic sample loader which places the specimen quickly and accurately on the anvil prior to impact. This ensures compliance with cycle times as stipulated by the relevant standards and ensures full operator safety. The Imatek DWTT range accommodates impact energies up to 100,000J and specimens up to 50mm thick.
Imatek is a leading UK based manufacturer of materials testing equipment primarily in the fields of impact testing and polymer melt rheology. Imatek’s products are used all over the world to test the properties of materials, components and assemblies in industries such as aerospace, polymer processing, steel production, automotive and academic research.