Advanced Material Testing at Multiple Scales
Villum Center for Advanced Structural Material Testing Technical University of Denmark
Modern engineering projects requires extensive experimentation in order to prove the efficacy and safety of structures from bridges to wind turbines to ships. In order to optimise an entire structure, and to identify potential failure mechanisms, engineers must cross barriers between disciplines in order to fully test their project at every scale.
In order to cross these barriers we require an interdisciplinary, centrally organised centre with capabilities at a number of scales. This is the focus of the newly established Villum Center for Advanced Structural Material Testing at Technical University of Denmark. CASMaT is the beneficiary of a 10 million Euro grant from the Villum Foundation to provide a one stop shop for engineers focusing on civil, mechanical and wind-based projects.
The grant will add facilities across a number of areas, including a Large Scale facility where huge structures can be tested as a whole; facilities for testing substructures and components in challenging environments; materials testing; testing of structures at the micro-scale; as well as improvement of key measuring techniques, and the vast amounts of data that go with measuring fatigue in structures.