Test equipment for variable amplitude fatigue and component testing

Dynamic fatigue testing machine up to 1000kN including operating load software module

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Imke Engelhardt
Department Civil Engineering

In the range of the FH-Invest research funding program, the Institute for Materials and Building Research was funded with a hydraulic test equipment for fatigue testing of parts as well as component testing.

The device has been applied for funding for the research work of the Institute for Materials and Building Research. The Institute for Materials and Building Research (IMB) is dedicated to the strategic goal of long-term maintenance and sustainable development of the building stock and infrastructure. The Institute for Materials and Building Research is the first research institute that has been installed by the university management.

The main research topics are:

• Efficiency of the resources used - through life cycle considerations
• service life of materials
• Constructions and structures as well as their reliability and safety.

An essential component of research at the Institute for Materials and Building Research is experimental component and material testing. In this way, the Institute contributes to the assessment of the existing building stock and the utilisation of possible extensions of service life, the conservation of resources through confirmed residual load-bearing capacities and new constructions optimised with regard to material and energy expenditure, and furthermore to the safety of supporting structures.

In addition to numerical analysis, component tests are an essential part of the analysis of load-bearing capacities of old and new designs across all materials. The investment should enable the institute to carry these out.

The service life of steel constructions of engineering structures and machine components is in many cases limited by the fatigue strength or operational strength. This topic has been a research focus of the applicants for years.

Test rig:
The test facility will make a major contribution to creating new knowledge in the field of materials and construction research and to making it sustainable through the multifaceted transfer to science, industry and society.

The test rig complements the test capacities for fatigue tests in the range of loads from 400-1000 kN, which are a limiting factor for the implementation of planned extensive operational load research projects and component tests.

Operating load investigations, in which time series have to be run in concrete terms, were only possible in a limited load range or could only be implemented using frame constructions with very large cylinders and high hydraulic costs. These can now be carried out economically and at the highest technical level.

In addition to the operating load tests, the investment also supplements the possibilities of component testing in the above-mentioned test load range. Due to the bending table provided, even larger components can be tested, which cannot be tested with the current existing test frames and individual cylinders, partly for capacity reasons, due to the test loads, or only uneconomically with unnecessarily high hydraulic costs.

Running Duration:
01.06.2020 - 31.01.2021, extended until 31.03.2022

Funded by:
Federal Ministry of Education and Research, FH-INVEST

Project executing organisation:
VDI Technology Center