Imatek has installed an IM10 Impact Tester at the Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute (NMIRI) in Japan.
Nagoya is located on Japan's pacific coast and is the fourth most populated urban area in the country.
NMIRI is one of the leading research institutes in Japan and work is primarily focussed on the automotive sector.
The IM10T-20HV machine was supplied complete with Imatek's C3008 data acquisition system, second impact protection system (SIPS), high velocity and variable mass system.
The machine was also supplied with a removable temperature chamber for pre-conditioning of specimens.
An electrical heating system and liquid nitrogen cooling system will enable specimens to be tested within the temperature range -70 to +180 degrees Celsius.
Imatek's IM10 range offers laboratory grade instrumentation, very rigid construction and high-quality software that provides detailed information, both graphical and tabular, for the specimen undergoing test.
The IM10 range of impact testers are ideally suited to performing a wide range of automotive tests including standard QC tests on polymers, the testing of composites and other alternative materials, characterising the energy absorption efficiency of polymeric foams, alloy foams and crush tubes for safety applications, dynamic fatigue and resilience testing of automotive rubbers, crush testing of structures and high rate testing of sheet steels.
To improve understanding of a material or structures impact performance, Imatek's Integrated High Speed Video system combines the data captured by the IM10 during the impact test together with high speed video imagery. This has proven particularly useful for automotive applications where complex failure modes can be encountered.
Imateks ImpAcqt software provides complete control over the impact system, the data capture, the camera and lights and the post test analysis and reporting. Since the camera and the data acquisition share the same trigger, the data and images can be precisely correlated. A video sequence provides a great deal of qualitative information about the impact event, and the software also allows quantitative information to be extracted.
Integrated high-speed video offers an advantage in many application areas and is available as an option for any of the Imatek range of impact testers or in a stand-alone mode, making it a general purpose tool that can be utilised by other parts of a customers operation and on a wide range of test apparatus including UTM's, pendulum, drop weights and crash walls.
Customers who are currently benefiting from our products in the automotive industry include Ford Motor Company, Renault, Peugeot Citroën Group, Faurecia, JSP International, Tokai Automotive and ESTACA.