Materials Testing Laboratory
IMAR is equipped with a Zwick Roell Universal Testing Machine (UTM) for materials testing. The UTM is designed for tensile, compression and flex testing as well as shear and torsion tests on a wide range of materials. Force and distance data of the material is graphically displayed and recorded to an extremely high accuracy. We also have a number of versatile cyclic testing machines, designed to repeatedly stress materials for large numbers of repetitive cycles to represent normal use in say for example the amount of steps taken wearing a particular shoe. Together with the UTM materials can be tested for long-term durability. This has been particularly useful in testing new materials for lower limb orthotics.
Over the years, new medical equipment such as orthopaedic fixators, shoe inserts and alignment devices have been designed within our research labs. Students can design new equipment on state of the art CAD software, and simulate function and usage before printing the component parts on our 3D printer.
