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Materials Testing

Design Unit: Our Services

Our Materials Laboratories support industrial gear research and consultancy projects in three main areas:

  • metallography and evaluation of material properties
  • heat treatment and grinding quality control
  • characterisation and analysis of gear failures
Someone looking into a microscope

Our facilities

We use a range of up-to-date laboratory equipment to study the metallurgy of gears and the factors affecting fatigue performance. Our facilities include:

  • sectioning, mounting and polishing equipment for metallographic sample preparation
  • digital imaging and image analysis software connected to stereo and reflected light microscopes
  • micro- and macro-Vickers testers for hardness and case depth measurement
  • X-ray diffraction equipment for measurement of residual stress and retained austenite
  • Barkhausen Noise analysis for detection of grinding burn
  • a scanning electron microscope with EDS capability for fractography and qualitative chemical analysis
  • eddy current crack detection equipment