Services provided

Material characterisation and quality control

• Thermal analysis by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC): Determination of glass transition temperature, melting temperature, degree of curing, OIT, Tox, etc.
• Dynamic Mechanical Thermal Analysis (DMTA): Determination of the glass transition temperature, E-modulus as function of temperature and frequency, shrinkage, etc. The instrument is equipped to perform measurement while exposing the sample to certain liquids
• Standard mechanical testing (See below) including tensile and flexural testing
• Determination of glass content and laminate build-up
• Determination of the type of glass in FRP
• Microscopic investigations, special developed staining techniques to assess laminate quality and defects
• Determination of the residual styrene content
• Determination of void content
• Infrared spectroscopy using FTIR (transmission and reflectance mode, IR microscope, FTIR linescan): Determination of the chemical nature of a polymer, degree of curing, determination of additives, characterization of material degradation, etc
• High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for analysis of additives and stabilisers
• Barcol hardness
• Hardness measurements on rubber
• X-ray for determination of the degree of crystallinity and crystal structure
• Access to other characterisation methods such as Raman, SEC, etc at the Royal Institute of Technology

Independent inspections and quality control

• Installation inspection, quality control on site and during manufacture
• Maintenance inspection
• Status assessment, on-site and by analysis of cut-outs

Chemical resistance testing

• Facilities to test in harsh environments including e.g. HF, mixed acid, concentrated H2SO4, ClO2, etc in the laboratory
• Several field testing stations (e.g. pickling bath, residual acid)
• Stress corrosion testing in harsh environment
• Creep testing of piping exposed to harsh environments such as mixed acid (from October/November 2011)
• Climate chambers where temperature and moisture can be regulated
• Climate chambers for testing in solvents, fuels at elevated temperature and pressure
• Testing facilities (in France) to test in marine and oil&gas environments (salt water loop, H2S, methane, etc)
• Evaluation according to the ASTM standard; in addition, specially developed evaluation techniques to determine diffusion and corrosion rates, special techniques to look on degradation and corrosion effects
• Diffusion and permeability studies

Failure analysis

• Failure analysis of process equipment including quality assessment, fractography, evaluation of stresses, etc.

Mechanical testing

• Several, different sized tensile testing machines from different manufacturers for tensile, flexural and compression testing.
• Testing temperatures from -20 to 300ºC (and higher)
• Cyclic testing
• Fatigue testing
• Creep testing (flat specimens, not piping)
• Impact testing (pendulum, HIP)
• DMTA

Microscopy

• Light microscope
• Polarised light microscope
• Different SEM instruments (FEG-SEM, FA-SEM)
• EDS, e.g. to study diffusion, determine the glass composition
• TEM
• Confocal microscope to study topography etc

Other services

• Analytical equipment to e.g. characterise fuels, AAE, ion chromatography, etc
• Manufacture techniques for composite materials (in cooperation with Swerea SICOMP)
• Comparative testing to metals possible, all standard equipment for metal corrosion testing and characterisation available
• Testing in especially designed equipment