i3 - Aalto Industry and Innovation Infrastructure / Mechanical Testing

Mechanical testing covers a wide range of tests, which can be divided broadly into two types:

  1. those that aim to determine a material's mechanical properties, independent of geometry.
  2. those that determine the response of a structure to a given action, e.g. testing of composite beams, aircraft structures to destruction, etc.
3-Axial testing (2 pcs)
Three axial testing is a mechanical testing method used to assess the mechanical properties and behavior of materials under controlled loading conditions. It involves subjecting a cylindrical sample of the material to simultaneous compressive, tensile, and shear forces along different axes. By applying different stresses and strains to the sample, triaxial testing provides valuable insights into the material's strength, stiffness, deformation characteristics, and failure mechanisms. This technique is widely used in geotechnical engineering, soil mechanics, rock mechanics, and materials science to study the behavior of soils, rocks, concrete, and other materials under complex loading conditions.
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Consolidation (1 pcs)

Soil consolidation refers to the mechanical process by which soil changes volume gradually in response to a change in pressure. This happens because soil is a two-phase material, comprising soil grains and pore fluid, usually groundwater. When soil saturated with water is subjected to an increase in pressure, the high volumetric stiffness of water compared to the soil matrix means that the water initially absorbs all the change in pressure without changing volume, creating excess pore water pressure. As water diffuses away from regions of high pressure due to seepage, the soil matrix gradually takes up the pressure change and shrinks in volume.

An oedometer test is a kind of geotechnical investigation performed in geotechnical engineering that measures a soil's consolidation properties. Oedometer tests are performed by applying different loads to a soil sample and measuring the deformation response. The results from these tests are used to predict how a soil in the field will deform in response to a change in effective stress.

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Hardness Testing (4 pcs)
Hardness is a measure of the resistance to localized plastic deformation induced by either mechanical indentation or abrasion. Some materials (e.g. metals) are harder than others (e.g. plastics, wood). Macroscopic hardness is generally characterized by strong intermolecular bonds, but the behavior of solid materials under force is complex; therefore, there are different measurements of hardness: scratch hardness, indentation hardness, and rebound hardness.
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Internal Friction (1 pcs)

Internal friction is the force resisting motion between the elements making up a solid material while it undergoes deformation.

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Universal Testing Machines (15 pcs)
A universal testing machine (UTM), also known as a universal tester, materials testing machine or materials test frame, is used to test the tensile strength and compressive strength of materials. An earlier name for a tensile testing machine is a tensometer. The "universal" part of the name reflects that it can perform many standard tensile and compression tests on materials, components, and structures (in other words, that it is versatile).
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