22 February 2017—11:00 AM Eastern time (17:00 Paris time)

Thierry Malo is team leader of the engineering services team at e-Xstream. Prior to his current role, Thierry served as a project engineer.

Beside his services management responsibilities, Thierry is instrumental in all initiatives at e-Xstream on fatigue modeling of composites.

Prior to joining the company in 2009, he worked for Rhodia Engineering Plastics in the development of state-of-the-art composite modeling techniques.

Description

The use of composite and plastics materials to lighweight structural parts is continuously increasing. A large variety of composite materials (chopped fibers and continuous fibers) are available on the market and the selection of the right material depends on its price, weight and, of course, performance for the targeted use. Performance means stiffness, strength, durability, dynamic behavior,… of the material under various types of loads: tensile, compressive, bending, shear, impact…

Part of this information is usually available in the datasheet of the material supplier. This is a good starting point but it’s definitely not sufficient. To understand precisely the dependency of the composite or plastic performance to its microstructure and how this relates to the manufacturing process (injection molding, compression molding, drappage,…), more information is often needed, which means additional material testing is required.

This raises the question: which additional tests should one perform in preparation for the evaluation of a given performance ? Which norms and specimens should be used for these tests?

During the webinar, tests used to characterize composite and plastic will be presented as well as the recommended method to produce the specimens. Finally, the method to post-process and analyze test results will be discussed so that you get more familiar with interpreting test data and determining error on test measurements.