Designing Custom Force Testers – Testing Piping on a Large Scale

ADMET strives to solve new challenges. For customers who require something a little out of the ordinary, ADMET is the place to go.

Image Credit: Admet Inc.

Working closely with customers to design and specify a custom testing machine creates excitement among all staff, from sales, to engineering and through to production. Thus, ADMET willingly extended its support, when a renowned plastic pipe manufacturer was looking for a machine to carry out tensile testing on full scale pipe sections and fused pipes.

ADMET designed and built this custom large plastic pipe testing system for a recent customer. Image Credit: Admet Inc.

The Why

In the plastics industry, tests like ASTM D790, ASTM D695 and ASTM D638 are traditionally used to identify the mechanical properties of plastic materials. However, if these tests are not sufficient, then there is a real problem.

While these mechanical tests can be used to identify flexural strengths, compressive strengths and tensile strengths of a material compound, they do not always provide a complete picture of how a customer’s final product will perform in the field.

Knowledge about the performance of final products and assemblies in field conditions is very important for plastic pipe manufacturers.

Hundreds or even thousands of pipe sections have to be fused together in order to lay a pipeline that is miles long but one bad connection can be enough to cause a disaster. Manufacturers can better control their fusing and extrusion processes by testing their fused connections and the longitudinal strength of full plastic pipe sections. This can prevent a minor processing or production issue from turning into a disaster out in the field.

The What

In order to build a large-scale horizontal pipe tensile tester that could house all pipe specimens and testing requirements, ADMET worked closely with its customers. The outcome was a 26 ft long custom built servo-hydraulic testing machine, capable of testing pipes from 5 ft to 10 ft in length, with a maximum possible elongation of 5 ft before failure and from 8 inches to 28 inches in diameter. The system’s capacity is 200,000 lbs and operates at up to 2 in/minute under load with a jog speed of over 7 in/minute.

ADMET’s MTEST Quattro controller and software package that was delivered along with the test system enables users to conveniently save and catalog test data and graphs, generate an unlimited number of test procedures and recall specific tests for comparison so as to improve research and development and process control efforts.

Testing pipe segments can prevent costly delays and failures down the line. Image Credit: Admet Inc.

The Result

A repeatable and precise technique to test fused pipe sections is now available for users. Also, users can make sure that these fused pipe sections are even stronger than the extruded pipe sections themselves.

ADMET’s Large Plastic Pipe Testing System. Image Credit: Admet Inc.

This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Admet, Inc. - Materials Testing Equipment.

For more information on this source, please visit Admet, Inc. - Materials Testing Equipment.