Jithin Gopal

Tensile Testing
Short Report 1

Demonstrator: Mr Yuefeng Cui Technician: Mr Joeseph Meggyesi Report compiled by Jithin Gopal (Group 2) Submitted on 21st October 2011 Experiment carried out in mechanical lab Composite Centre Imperial College London on 14th October 2011

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Summary
Tensile testing was carried out on unidirectional T300/914 Hexcel 16 ply 00 composite material according to the Composites Research Advisory Group standard 300 (CRAG 300). Two different tensile machines were used and the rate of loading was also different in one case to investigate the effect on the material. Three strain measuring technique, machine displacement data, extensometer and strain gauge were used to measure the strain of the sample. The major problem during the testing was the failure of the specimen close to the end tabs, this was due to the stress concentration close to the end tab because of adhesive joints. Machine displacement data was found to be hugely inaccurate due to lot of moving parts in the machine, strain gauge and extensometer produced similar result but the strain gauge was more accurate as it takes reading closer to the composite. Different loading rates also produced various results Ultimate Tensile Stress was found to be different for different machine and different loading rates variation was 2.1Gpa for 1mm/min and 2.35GPa for 5mm/min. Results were compared with other group and was comparable. To summarise this test result can be used for quality purposes rather than design because of the type of failure and less samples used. CRAG standard was used as a guideline as there was no failure at the specified 30-90 seconds window.

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Introduction
The need to evaluate composite material test data has increased in recent years as a result of the complex nature of the work carried out in the composite industry .The complex shaped now made of the composites like fuselage on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner requires specific measurement of data for design use. Tensile test in simple terms is a testing method which can be used for measuring properties like Ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and tensile modulus (E) of a material but with additional instrumentation poisons ratio can also be measured. Mechanical testing of the material has been performed for a long time and in traditional material like metals this can be simplified by work hardening character of the material which helps to test simple parallel shape samples . With composite material the heterogeneous and anisotropic properties require that the test methods used for the metals to be modified and carefully scrutinized before applying directly for characterization of composite material . For composite material there are two different reasons to carryout mechanical testing the first is to establish the fundamental properties which enables to design structures and the second being to determine the properties of an existing material. Composites materials can be tested using a wide variety of test methods recommended by national and international standardisation organisation. The standards that govern tensile testing are, American Society for Testing and Material (ASTM), British Standards (BS) and the Composites Research Advisory Group (CRAG). The specific standards are ASTM D 3039, BS 2782, CRAG 300,301 and 302.

Table 1 Dimensions of standard tensile specimens in different standards samples . Group 2 1

Jithin Gopal As seen in table 1 different standard specify dimension for tensile testing .In tradition materials plastic dog bone shape is used for tensile testing (for Example in ASTM D standards for plastic material). This cant be done for composites as profiling the flat plates to dog bones introduce discontinuity at which of the laminates can occur .Two approaches to specimen shape have been adopted by the various standard bodies ASTM, BSI and the CRAG test methods.BSI suggest using the test specimen which has been waisted in through thickness direction as seen in Figure one below. CRAG also adopted a similar approach but if the test was for quality purposes it recommended using parallel specimens. The ASTM D3039-75 specifies a unwaisted parallel for all purposes and this is followed by CRAG in the later edition as using waisted samples were producing results with high experimental results. All test methods requires end-tabbing which transfers load into the specimen but with different lengths .

Figure 1 Tensile specimens for use with aligned (00 and 900) fibre reinforced material (a) ASTM D 3039 (00); (b)ATM D 3039 (900) ;(c)ISO 527(00);(d) CRAG methods 300(00) and 301(90o) .

Different test machines could be used for testing the composite material in tensile testing they have an impact on the results as there are different mechanisms by which they operate. There are hydraulic or screw jack machines which has a soft loading and has a problem at failure of specimens. The other type is the displacement control and this is exclusively used for composites and is hard loaded and load drop at failure. In this experiment the two machines used are Instron 4505 with 100 kN load cell and Zwick 1488 with 200kN load cell. Such machines consist of a rigid frame, sample clamping, extensometers and a driven crosshead. The crosshead motion, and the force involved, can be set or recorded during a test. The speed of deformation, or the rate of loading, can be controlled, as these parameters are known to have a strong effect on the mechanical behaviour of polymeric compounds

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Figure 2 (a)

Figure 3 (b)

Figure 4 (c)

Schematic representation of a universal testing machine, (b) the Instron jaws with sample loaded, (c) Zwick jaws .

Grips are a very important part of tensile testing in composites and normally a form of the friction grip is used and it role is that it serrated surfaces. There are two type of grips parallel grips, positively closed by manual or hydraulic means which allow the control the gripping foce . Wedge grips (self tightening grips) have gripping faces which slide on inclined planes so that the gripping force is increased with the load applied .

Zwick machine has a built in alignment with grips rigidly mounted, for testing in this machine needed to be manufactured to a high standard and maintained regularly. It is difficult to guarantee long term accuracy after the machine has seen large amount of service. Instron on the other hand as a universal joint self alignment , but in practice the alignment may be hampered by friction in universal joint, and the flexibility in the load path may encourage tearing failure across the specimen. As there is no yielding mechanism in composites it is important to have the alignment right as misalignment could lead to bending and which in turn will cause the structure to fail prematurely because of local stress accumulation .

Strain measurement is an important part of tensile testing and there are different techniques which could be used for this the most common techniques are extensometer and the strain gauges both of them have advantages and disadvantages. The extensometer need to be in contact with the specimen and this is achieved on a flat specimen by the use of a curved knife edge and this could damage the outer fibres and lead to premature failure.

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Jithin Gopal Alternatively a strain gauge could be used to measure the strain and as shown in the diagram below it works as it is generally a form of Wheatstone bridge circuit. The material can be damaged when the strain gauge is attached and also while soldering the leads on the strain gauge. The strain gauges have to be aligned in the right direction or it could be providing corrupted values. Even though there are many issues with the use of the strain gauges they are the most accurate way of measuring the strain on a composite material. The third way of measuring strain was to use the machine displacement this is the least accurate as they are many moving parts on the machine and they all contribute to an error.

Figure 5 Wheatstone bridge principle used in a strain gauge and an actual strain gauge attached

Objective
The purpose of this experiment is to perform tensile testing on Unidirectional T300/914 Hexcel 16 ply 00 composite material. The experiment was carried out on the basis of CRAG 300.This is a specific method for test of the longitudinal tensile strength and modulus of unidirectional fibre reinforced plastic. With use of additional stain gauge measurement poisons ratio can also be measured. The main objective of this experiment is to measure the following properties Strain (3methods) o Machine displacement data o Bi axial Strain gauge o Extensometer Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) Tensile modulus (0.25%secant modulus) Poisons ratio 4

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In order to carry out the objective different set of skills and equipment is required and it is also important to analyse the failure mode and the expected failure mode. The equipment used for this experiment is listed below

Instron 4505 Tensile testing machine (100kN) Zwick1488 Tensile testing machine (200kN) Biaxial strain gauge (FCA-3-11, Manufactured by TML Tokyo) Other measuring equipment o Vernier calliper for width and length o Screw gauge for thickness measurement

The technique required for this lab is to attach the strain gauge correctly for measuring the strain Two tensile testing machines to be used and the results from both to be compared Two test speed 1mm/min and 5mm/min to be used in the Zwick 1488 and 1mm/min to be used in the Instron ( to investigate the effect of rate of loading on result) Collecting data from the data acquisition system Failure of the material to be within the gauge length The failure mode expected is delamaination and failure ideally to be between the gauge length

Procedure
This experiment relied on testing sample which has been prepared already but the technician and the material to be tested was prepared from unidirectional carbon/epoxy (T300/914 from Hexcel) according to the revised CRAG and nominal thickness of 2mm HexPly 914 is a highly successful modified epoxy matrix which is used extensively in high temperature resistant primary aircraft structures. The controlled melt viscosity and excellent matrix rheology of 914 permits a wide range of processing conditions for high quality components Pre preg curing cycle is 1 hr at 175C and 7 bar pressure and 4 hrs post cure at 190C {{13 Hexcel Corporation 2007}} Heat up rate 2C to 5C, components up to 2 mm thick can be cured without a dwell in the cure schedule, provided a maximum heat up rate of 2C/minute is used. {{13 Hexcel Corporation 2007}}

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Jithin Gopal 2mm ply were manufacture at Imperial College London by stacking 16 layer of pre-peg in 00 directions Glass fibre square ended tabs were installed seen in figure 6 below.

Figure 6 Schematic of specimen that was tested .

Three set of experiment was carried out during the laboratory session 1. Three sample of the material were measured for thickness, width gauge length and end tab length. 2. Sample was abraded on the gauge length and the strain gauge was attached at the centre of the gauge length using cyanoacrylate (Industrial strength Super Glue ) 3. Connection from the strain gauges were soldered via a solder pad and connected to a multimeter. 4. Sample was loaded to machine 5. Sample aligned with jaws 6. Jaws locked mechanically checking for no misalignment 7. Extensometer with an initial displacement of 50mm attached to the specimen 8. Rate of loading set on the machine ( Instron 1mm/min , Zwick 1mm/min and 5mm/min) 9. Load applied by the machine and the data collected by the data collection system 10. Extensometer removed at 0.25% strain to avoid damage to the measuring device 11. Sample allowed to fail and sample collected after the failure to observe the failing point and speculate on the type of failure 12. Steps 1-12 repeated for other samples and loading rate increased for one specimen. The Instron machine loading of 100kN was possible and the Zwick loading capability was reaching 200kN. As shown in figure 2 the jaws were friction grips and had a rough finish to the surface which helped to secure the composite material. Parallel clamping grips positively Group 2 6

Jithin Gopal closed manually as in the case of the Instron, and using a spring system in the case of Zwick allows the operator to control the gripping force and do the necessary correction required . Data collection system is fully automated as typical standards require system to have an accuracy of 1% or better. Data points are to be collected to an appropriate rate so that no important information is lost and the computer system records the data which is then analysed later to produce stress-strain curve from which the results are deduced as shown in the figure below .

Figure 7 Typical stress strain graph for composite material

Results Instron Results

Rate of loading (1mm/min) sample 3

Figure 8 (a) Stress VS strain graph from machine data Figure 8 (b) Stress VS strain from extensometer

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Figure 8(C) Stress strain graph from strain gauge data Figure 8 (D) combined stress strain graph limited to 0.5% strain values .

Properties Ultimate Tensile strength Ultimate Tensile stress Poisons ratio

Group 2 70kN 2.1GPa 0.29

Secant Modulus ( extensometer) 119GPa Secant Modulus ( Strain gauge) 122GPa

Figure 8 (E) Poisons ratio for the Instron sample.

Table 2 summary table from Instron testing

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Jithin Gopal The failure mode was delamaination and failure near end tabs. Failure happened near the end tab region as it is difficult to see the site of incitation of failure without high seed camera technique. Refer appendix to see the calculation of the secant modulus (One example shown of extensometer meter data used for secant modulus, this method was used for the rest of the sample).

Zwick sample 2 (5mm/min)

Figure 9 (a) Stress VS strain graph from machine data Figure 9 (b) Stress VS strain from extensometer

Figure 9 (C) Stress strain graph from strain gauge data Figure 9 (D) combined stress strain graph limited to 0.5% strain values .

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Properties Ultimate Tensile strength Ultimate Tensile stress Poisons ratio

Group 2 71kN 2.35GPa 0.29

Secant Modulus ( extensometer) 104GPa Secant Modulus ( Strain gauge) 129GPa

Figure 9 (E) Poisons ratio for the Instron sample. Table 3 summary table from Zwick (5mm/min testing)

The failure mode was delamaination and failure near end tabs.

Zwick sample 1(mm/min)

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Figure 10 (a) Stress VS strain graph from machine data Figure 10(b) Stress VS strain from extensometer

Figure 10 (D) Stress strain graph from strain gauge data Figure 10 (E) Poisons ratio Graph

Properties Ultimate Tensile strength Ultimate Tensile stress Poisons ratio

Group 2 69kN 2.18GPa 0.28

Secant Modulus ( extensometer)111GPa Secant Modulus ( Strain gauge) 124GPa

Table 4 Summary Table

The failure mode was delamaination and failure near end tabs. Group 2 11

Jithin Gopal Properties Instron 1mm/min Ultimate Tensile strength Ultimate Tensile stress Poisons ratio 70kN 2.1GPa 0.29 Zwick 1mm/min 69kN 2.18GPa 0.28 111GPa 124GPa Zwick 5mm/min 71kN 2.35GPa 0.29 104GPa 129GPa

Secant Modulus ( extensometer)119GPa Secant Modulus ( Strain gauge) 122GPa

Table 5 Summary Table

Dimensions of Specimens Specimen Number 1 2 Side Gauge Length (mm) 99.4 98.9 1 3 5 Top Tab Length (mm) 50.9 50.2 9 3 Bottom Tab Length (mm) 50.4 50.7 4 3 Side Gauge Length (mm) 98.1 97.9 2 9 6 Top Tab Length (mm) 50.3 50.4 9 0 Bottom Tab Length (mm) 51.9 50.2 3 4 Width (mm) 15.1 15.0 3 1 15.1 15.0 6 2 15.2 15.0 1 5 Thickness (mm) 2.17 2.29 2.20 2.27 2.20 2.22
Table 6 measurements of the specimens

3 97.1 5 51.3 6 51.2 6 97.1 2 51.1 8 51.1 3 15.0 4 15.0 5 15.0 6 2.19 2.22 2.20

Group Data

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Figure 11 comparisons of the data from different group on strain gauge and extensometer

Discussion
The results obtained from the above experiment has been analysed and the results presented in the results section. The summary table (tale 4) presents the data from this groups analysis. The accuracy of the measurement is not suitable for design purposes but can be used for quality purposes as the failure was near the end tab region. It was also noticed that it is difficult to accurately quote a value because of the small number of specimen tested. According to the CRAG standard 5 set of samples should be tested. However these results are comparable with manufacture data from Hexcel on this particular prepeg material. The repeatability of the material cannot be commented as there was only 2 set of data available .If the two sets of data are compared the repeatability of the material tested is consistent but it is too small a pool data to draw conclusions from. Validity of the experiment data according to the CRAG standard is not feasible as there have been many deviations from the standard; the specimens have been prepared according to the standard by as the measurement shown in Table 5 they vary from the standard and is different for specimen to specimen. To be a valid test data according to CRAG standard the failure must occur 30-90 seconds. This has not happened for any specimen and along with the failure which was near the end tabs not acceptable for this form of testing. Three measuring techniques were used in this experiment to measure strain and as can been seen from Figure 8(A),9(A) and 10(A) the machine displacement data is the least accurate, the Group 2 13

Jithin Gopal % strain reading are in the range of 6,8,10 % strain for the samples tested . This is not a true reflection and this data was not used for any further analysis the reason for that is that both the tensile machine contains a lot of moving parts and even though it has been calibrated and serviced yearly, this compound to the error. The rate of data collection was low on the machine displacement data so the accuracy is also poor for this reason. Extensometer data as seen in figure 8(B),9(B) and 10(B) is more accurate and more sensible results than the machine displacement data .There is a major disadvantage of the extensometer as mentioned in the procedure the extensometer is removed after hitting 0.3% strain as this stops damage to the measuring instrument. Another source of error on the extensometer is the gauge length measured initially is 50 mm but it is not very accurate there is movement when attached to sample and other errors involved in that process. The strain gauge was the most accurate measuring device out of the three methods used here, the results were similar to that of the extensometer but were more reliable because of more data points and it measures the strain from the surface of the sample. There were some problems associated with strain gauges; the data from the gauges after the first delamaination occurred cannot be used as it has lost the contact with the actual specimen. Strain gauges has to be installed with due care as not to damage the specimen and also made sure it has a good contact and is aligned in the direction the measurement has to be taken. Results were compared with other group and were comparable ass seen in figure 11. The failure type seen in the material was delamaination and as can be seen in the figure below the failure originated near the end tabs. These end tabs are made out of glass fibres and are very stiff and the specimen is attached to the end tabs with the adhesive there is a region where there is rapid change in area. These sites can act for stress concentration, but to be able to comment thoroughly high speed camera techniques has to be used to inspect the sample during testing.

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Figure 12 delamaination of the sample during testing and failed Instron sample

Other sources of the error on this experiment include the error from material during processing manufacturing, applying end tabs. There was sticking of the jaws in some sample this was avoided when data analysis was carried out any irregularities in the stress strain curve was ignored and the curve extrapolated back to zero. It is also interesting the effect of the testing machine on the result the values shown in table 4 summarised the result obtained from different machine s. The results do not vary very much but there was definitely different failure mechanism. For the Zwick machine at 5mm/min the sample failed explosively as there the rate of loading was higher from this machine. This machine is also designed for higher load sand hence involves more rigid framework compared to Instron. Overall the data from this exercise can be used for quality purposes than for design for this reason.

Conclusions
This experiment was carried on Unidirectional T300/914 Hexcel 16 ply 00 composite material and the objective was to carry out a tensile testing according to CRAG 300 standard. Three strain measuring technique, machine displacement data, extensometer and strain gauge were used to measure the strain of the sample. Two set of machines Instron 4505 with 100 kN load Group 2 15

Jithin Gopal cell and Zwick 1488 with 200kN load cell was used and the loading rate was 1mm/min for both machines and 5mm/min for the Zwick 1488 second sample. The samples which were prepared by the technician had glass fibre based end tabs attached to enable gripping in the jaws. Bi axial strain gauge was attached to the middle of the sample to measure inline and transverse strain. This data was then used to find out the poisons ratio of the material. The results were analysed by plotting stress strain graphs as shown I figure 8, 9 and 10. The machine displacement data was not very useful as it was showing very large strain and was not used for calculating and values. The strain gauge and the extensometer provided more reliable data and could be compared to the manufactures information on the pre peg material. The mode of failure was generally failure arising close to the end tabs as there is stress concentration where the tab is jointed to the specimen. To conclude the experiment was adapted from CRAG 300 standard, there was no failure at 3090 seconds specified in the standard and the minimum number of samples to be tested was 5. So this experiment cannot be used for design data purpose and should be used for quality control and other purposes because of the failure location are not within the gauge length and hence result is compromised. Results were compared with other group and were comparable. Strain gauge data produced the closest match to the manufactures data and was the most accurate source of measuring strain out of the three methods compared.

References Appendix 1

Figure 13 Graph showing the procedure to calculate the secant modulus

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Jithin Gopal ( y 2 y1) 0.304 = = 1.22GPa ( x 2 x1) 0.2493

Slope =

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