Imatek have recently installed an IM10T-20 Impact Tester at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
The University of Auckland is New Zealand's leading and largest university with 38,500 students. The University has eight faculties and it supports a number of research centres and institutes.
The Centre for Advanced Composite Materials (CACM), which was established in 2002, is a joint venture between the University of Auckland, SCION (Forest Research) and other industrial participants utilising government research funding.
The goal of the centre is to conduct research into advanced composite materials and manufacturing processes. TheCentre, directed by Professor Debes Bhattacharyya, has pioneered the development of polymer and composite materials - notably a world-leading polymer-polymer composite, made by blending and processing two recycled plastics.
This new product has a wide range of applications in manufacturing, biomedical areas and packaging, particularly for products that have limited shelf-life.
The IM10T-20 has a two metre drop height and offers standard impact velocities within the range 1m/s to 6.26m/s and up to 20m/s with the optional High Velocity system. Impact energy is in the range 2.5J to 588J for the standard machine, rising to 2000J with the high velocity system.
Options selected by the University of Auckland included the high velocity system, hemispherical strikers and anvil clamping to enable testing to the requirements of ISO6603, Imatek's highly effective stripper system for automated removal of tough/ductile specimens from the striker and second impact prevention (SIP) which arrests mass in the event of a rebound.
The University of Auckland will also be using Imatek's Integrated High Speed Video option which combines data captured by the IM10 during the impact test, together with high speed video imagery.
A video sequence provides a great deal of qualitative information about a test event and the software also allows quantitative information to be extracted.