Induction heating apparatus for high temperature testing of thermo-mechanical properties

A low cost high temperature test facility designed and built for the purpose of thermo-mechanical testing is described. An induction heater provides variable heating rates, simple operation and easy access for temperature and strain measurement. Specially designed high temperature specimen grips with water-cooling allow for testing over long periods of time. Contact temperature and strain measurements are utilised to provide accurate and reliable results. Detail is given on the experimental procedure including calibration of the thermocouple temperature measurement. A validation study of the thermal expansion and tensile Young’s Modulus of carbon steel 1020 at temperatures up to 850 °C proves the accuracy of the test set-up and procedure. Results are given for the stress–strain curves of aluminium alloy 7000 T4 at various temperatures to further demonstrate the capabilities of the test facility. The measured thermo-mechanical properties of these materials were used to develop high temperature constitutive models for implementation in finite element thermal–structural analysis of hypersonic structures.