Company Profile

Composites Testing Lab. Ltd,

Co. galway, , Ireland

Services Products - Services,
Public. Ltd. Firm Since 1997

Composites Testing Laboratory Ltd (CTL) was established in March 1997 within the National University of Ireland, Galway as part of a materials development project with Airbus UK (formerly BAE Systems Airbus) and the Irish Government.

In June 1998 CTL achieved ILAB* accreditation from the National Accreditation Board which enabled CTL to begin commercial testing for the composites industry. As a result of the success of this venture and the realisation that there was a need within the composites industry for a specialised composites testing facility, CTL became a limited company in March 1999.

Since then CTL has been carrying out commercial testing for a rapidly growing client base including Airbus, BAeSystems
DaimlerChrysler, Hexcel and Tenax.

CTL is based on the university campus and therefore has access to the research facilities and expertise of the university. This allows us access to the extensive experience of the Composites Research Unit.

Products :
-Testing Services -Mechanical CTL are fully accredited to carry out the following mechanical tests: .Tensile tests for composite, plastic and metallic materials .Fatigue testing of composite and metallic materials .Compression testing (Celanese, Cruciform, CLC and CRAG 401) .Open hole tension and compression .Filled hole tension and compression .In-plane shear .Interlaminar shear .Bolt bearing strength .Mode I and Mode II fracture .V-notch shear .Instrumented drop weight impacting .Lap shear .3 and 4 point bend tests for monolithic carbon or plastic and sandwich carbon or plastic .Instrumented drop weight impact .Specialised component and structural .Testing can be performed to customers own tests methods and procedures if requested. -Environmental Tests CTL have the ability to carry out environmental tests as follows: Mechanical testing within the temperature rage of -70?C up to and including 250?C Temperature/humidity conditioning of specimens or components from - 80?C to 100?C and ambient to 99% relative humidity. Fluid immersion up to and including 150?C -Physical Tests CTL carry out the following physical tests for composite materials: Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) Glass Transition Temperature (Tg) by means of a Dynamic Mechanical Analyser (DMA) Fibre Volume Fraction Void content measurement -Finite Element Analysis (FEA) -The Composites Testing Laboratory has the capability for FEA, running PATRAN and NASTRAN. Our management and staff have many years experience in performing FEA design calculations with composite materials. We can offer full non-linear anisotropic design capability, and can also use FEA to design an appropriate test for our customer's product.