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Partnership Opportunities Available with NIAR and the ASTM COE

January 08, 2019 | Categories: Opportunities

Polymer AM Test Methods – Round Robin Study

Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) is seeking partners interested in contributing polymer feedstock material and/or building test coupons for a round robin study to assess geometric and test fixture considerations for the mechanical testing of additively manufactured polymers.

Participating members can claim cost share through America Makes for providing support in this study.

Background

Leveraging the experience and lessons learned from recent qualification and equivalency programs conducted through the National Center for Advanced Material Performance (NCAMP) in coordination with America Makes Project 3003 High Performance Additive Manufactured Thermoplastics, test method modifications and areas of guidance have been established utilizing several currently available ASTM test methods.

As documented in the AMSC Roadmap, these methods were not originally written for AM materials and often required additional guidance, notes and/or modified test fixtures to deliver results useful to industry (see AMSC – FMP1 and FMP4). Although the test methods were conducted on ULTEM 9085 material manufactured using the fused deposition modeling process, many of the lessons learned may be applied to other polymer AM materials and processes. In order to ensure applicability to a wide range of AM materials and processes, a full assessment of polymer AM materials and build processes is essential to show these test methods provide valuable results to the broader AM industry.

Current Research

The current program is in conjunction with the ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (CoE) and builds upon previous work, which will ultimately result in the development of a Standard Guide for polymer AM test methods. This guide will address the test methods used during the qualification and equivalency test programs, which include both ASTM D30 and D20 test methods.  NIAR is coordinating with the relevant ASTM committees in the development of this guide.

The focus of this round robin study includes evaluation of the following methods:

  1. Tension: ASTM D638 – Standard Test Method for Tensile Properties of Plastics
  2. Compression: ASTM D695 – Standard Test Method for Compressive Properties of Rigid Plastics
  3. Open Hole Compression: ASTM D6484 – Standard Test Method for Open-Hole Compressive Strength of Polymer Matrix Composite Laminates

Partners will be asked to build coupons that will be mechanically tested at NIAR. All partners will have access to the resulting data.

Contacts

If you are interested in participating in this round robin study, please contact Chris Holshouser and Rachael Andrulonis for more information. Please also indicate if you have polymer feedstock material to donate and/or capability to build test specimens (both machined and as-built specimens will be studied).

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