SELF-GUIDING JAWS FOR GRIPPING COMPOSITE SPECIMENS AT THE TENSILE-TORSION TEST

Abstract

In the past decades the usage of composites materials in industries met an important growth. If initially composites materials were directly associated with aerospace industry, nowadays more and more products and applications are tailored to various composites (e.g. automotive, pharmaceutical, food industry). The validation of composites in the specific application is mostly based on tests; which subject materials to various mechanical loads. Often, these tests are requested and controlled by standards which are checking the material performance in a certain direction (e.g. static tensile strength test). The purpose of this paper work is to present an idea of a set of jaws which combines the tensile with torsion load, the movements being given strictly by the device geometry.