The following information was taken from the following handbook:

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The purpose of this is to present further information on the importance of composites testing and the various ways we can go about it., it is also a chance for me to evaluate this source to see if it is worth it to look through for further information.

Keep in mind that the testing of composites is much different than the testing of isotropic materials and therefore we must enhance our knowledge on this subject matter so we can do things much, much more efficiently in the future.

Also, note that there is much more information in the handbook on testing that I don’t believe is important for our needs but may be of some use to anybody that is interested.

Keep in mind that the following headings directly emulate where I got my information from within the handbook.

Overview of Testing

Building-Block Approach

For the most part in composites testing, you should always follow what’s known as the building-block approach, it is a series of tests that build off of each other, starting off using coupons which are just small pieces of material (just like we’re planning on doing right now) and slowly building up to a full-scale component, below is the pyramid of this approach:

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We will most likely only go up to elements if even that as we cannot afford to do testing on our full components.

The building block approach can be summarized with the following steps:

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Test Program Planning

Testing standards

This handbook follow the practice of the ASTM D-30 comittee (the comittee in charge of advanced composites testing). Below is a table that may prove useful right now or in the future of which test methods may be used to test various things, notes a, b, and c are also shown below

Specimen Preparation

The following graphic is the process of specimen preparation for testing that we should follow in the future:

Note that steps 3-8 may not be required for particular test types or specimens. An example of this is that not every test may have tabs bonded if the test done is a three-point bending test or an impact test.

Below is guidance given by the ASTM standard on the 8-step process shown above:

Along with all of this, we can add our own nondestructive examniation (NDE) or other processing checks to assure that each step of the specimen prep process has been performed well. These NDE’s are described in the ASTM document (we should check it out).

Below is an NDE that can confirm if the surface is flat or dimpled:

The above is done by using two different types of measuring probes.

Constituent Materials Testing

Chemical Tests

We don’t currently do any of these tests but it could be worth looking into. These are more scientific tests that we could possibly do in the future that could help get the information presented in the table below. I know for a fact that most of these tests can be done on campus and could maybe provide us with valuable information?

Although these are interesting, I don’t exactly know if they would give us anything useful? They may but they may be too advanced and not worth it for our means. Anyways, just a thought.

Formulations

I don’t exactly know the point of this section but, they do note a couple tests that can be used on “cured impregnated systems” to get some small properties, they are listed below:

The handbook doesn’t quite explain how to do these tests but, I bet we’d be able to figure that out. I think the completeness of cure could be useful by means of a differential scanning calorimetry for glass transition test (I think that’s what it would be called). Then again, we may be confident enough in our curing to not worry about this.

Lamina and Laminate Mechanical Testing

The following is a table of many testing standards that we could maybe use?

The rest of this section only explains these test standards and how they do them, I believe that the title of the standard gives plenty of information and they don’t need to be summarized in this page. We can just take a look at these standards and pick and choose what we want, Although, I will insert pictures of the various testing fixtures used in some of these standards and I will be labelling them accordingly.

Element and Subcomponent Testing

As with the section prior, they list out many standard documents that can be used for tests on elements and subcomponents.

Small Conclusion

After reading this handbook, although it had some valuable information, a lot of it was extremely high level and very complicated to understand, it seems like this source may not be suited for us since we aren’t a big corporation that can afford all the specified equipment for composites manufacturing.