New Materials. New Questions: How Materials Testing is Keeping Pace
New Materials. New Questions: How Materials Testing is Keeping Pace Properties of the materials being used across manufacturing have fundamentally changed, raising a new set of questions in the realm of materials testing. These stem from “will new physical attributes affect final product performance?” to “how will these new materials perform against proven and relied-upon industry standards?” (Figure 1) Figure 1. Changes to material properties and characteristics throughout manufacturing are requiring enhanced methods to ensure compliance and confidence in materials testing. In the face of this uncertainty, materials testing professionals are accessing better research and testing tools as well as standards that are evolving to properly evaluate new material formulations and performance characteristics. Two particularly affected areas are additive manufacturing and recycled and composite polymers, both of which introduce a different set of variables into the processing of materials,...