Forging New Bonds with Composites

摘要

In the heart of Derbyshire, church steeples, wooded valleys and manor houses preserve the tranquil British countryside depicted in the classics of Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. It's an unlikely setting for composite material testing, one of the most advanced areas of exploration in modern manufactur-ing. Yet, in Darley Dale, Derbyshire, you'll find HBM nCode's Advanced Materials Char-acterization and Test (AMCT) Facility, located a mere 15-minute walk from St. Helen's Church. Composite materials are different from traditional ma-terials like metal or plastic. They're engineered to achieve the desired durability, elasticity and resistance. Because they're produced by mixing different material strands, fi-bers and plies, they're anisotropic and inhomogeneous. In layman's terms, they do not deform, stretch and break in the same way in all directions.