Our Testing Capabilities

Equipped for testing from room to high temperatures and from quasi-static to complex fatigue regimes, CENTROID supports research and industrial programmes across the aerospace, medical, sustainable transport, and manufacturing sectors.

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For enquiries, custom test program scoping, or to discuss your experimental requirements, please contact the CENTROID team at: centroid@sheffield.ac.uk. Our team will direct your inquiry to the appropriate technical specialists and academics.

Materials testing and characterisation

We provide comprehensive experimental evaluation of fundamental mechanical, physical, and microstructural properties across a wide range of engineering materials, including metals, advanced composites, polymers, cellular lattices, and bio-materials.

Mechanical Property Determination: Standard and custom testing to determine Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS), Young’s modulus, yield strength, and Poisson’s ratio in accordance with international standards (such as ASTM E8 and ASTM D3039).
Advanced Deformation Measurement: High-resolution non-contact 3D Digital Image Correlation (DIC) for full-field surface strain and displacement mapping.
Testing Modalities: Uniaxial tension, compression, flexure (3/4-point bending), shear, and inter-laminar performance testing.
Impact & Thermal Energy Absorption: Charpy and Izod pendulum impact testing under controlled temperatures ranging from -100°C to +100°C.
Biomechanics & Micro-Scale Analysis: Multi-scale tissue/cell characterisation, microscopy, and atomic force analysis.

Component level testing and assessment

Our facilities allow complete sub-assemblies and individual engineering components to be evaluated under realistic operational stresses, thermal profiles, and environmental conditions.

Rotating Component & Spin Testing: High-speed rotor testing up to burst speed, including radial growth measurement and low-cycle fatigue cycling within evacuated vacuum chambers for aerospace and EV propulsion systems.
Tribology & Wear Evaluation: Dedicated rigs for investigating contact mechanics, friction, lubrication, and wear in full-scale wheel/rail interfaces, wind turbine gearboxes, and industrial metal rolling processes.
Multiaxial & Torsional Loading: Biaxial loading up to 100 kN per axis and high-torque setups up to 1 kNm to evaluate complex multiaxial stress states.
Hydrostatic & Pressure Vessel Validation: High-pressure testing up to 700 bar for proof and destructive burst testing of fuel tanks, gas vessels, and fluid containment systems.
Custom Component Rigs: In-house design and fabrication of bespoke fixtures to simulate specific boundary conditions and operational drive cycles.

Structural testing

We offer high-capacity, industrial-scale structural validation to bridge the gap between analytical modeling and physical certification for critical assets and infrastructure.

Large-Scale Loading Infrastructure: Extensive strong floor (up to 10m x 5m) and strong wall facilities capable of applying multi-channel synchronous static and dynamic forces up to multi-meganewton levels.
Full-Scale Airframe & Asset Validation: High-capacity loading frames accommodating specimens up to 5m length and 2m width for wing panels, composite fuselages, and heavy vehicle components.
Buckling & Heavy Compression: Specialized daylight frames and units delivering up to 1800 kN compression force for structural stability and collapse testing.
Civil & Infrastructure Simulation: Seismic shake tables and heavy hydraulic actuators to simulate earthquake loading, structural settling, and blast response.
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM): Integrated sensor monitoring utilizing acoustic emission, shearography, Lamb wave analysis, and pattern-recognition algorithms to detect real-time damage initiation.

Quasi static testing

Our quasi-static testing capabilities deliver precise control over low-rate mechanical loading to accurately profile load-deformation behavior, material yield, and failure modes.

Load Capacity Range: High-precision electric and servo-hydraulic testing frames spanning capacities from 12.5 kN up to heavy-duty 1800 kN units.
Testing Configurations: Precision tensile, compression, 3-point/4-point bending, open-hole compression, and interface shear testing.
High-Accuracy Instrumentation: Class-0.5 accuracy load measurement paired with contact extensometers, video extensometers, and non-contact DIC optics.
Pressure testing: Integrated pressure and fluid loading platforms for steady hydrostatic proof testing up to 700 bar.

High temperature

We evaluate materials and structural components under severe thermal environments to reflect high-temperature service conditions in propulsion, energy, and aerospace applications.

Environmental Chamber: Fan-assisted thermal chamber capable of heating test specimens up to 550°C on servo-hydraulic test frames up to 100 kN.
Non-Contact Optical DIC Access: Equipped with optical viewing windows to perform 3D Digital Image Correlation strain mapping through high-temperature glass.
Thermal Extensometry: High-temperature compatible lateral and axial extensometers allowing accurate determination of Poisson's ratio, Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS), and Young's modulus under ASTM standards (such as ASTM E8 and ASTM D3039) at elevated temperatures.

High speed testing

We deliver world-class high strain rate material characterisation to assess dynamic material response during impact, crash, blast, and high-velocity events.

Split-Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB): Comprehensive suite of bar apparatus capable of measuring material strain response in the high strain rate range of 1000 s⁻¹ to 3000 s⁻¹.
Broad Material Spectrum: Configured to test low-impedance foams, lattices, composites, granular assemblies, energetics, and high-strength metals.
Energetics & Reactive Materials: Dedicated off-site variant equipped for safe testing of reactive materials and explosives.
High-Speed Imaging Integration: Synchronized with ultra-high-speed cameras operating up to 100,000 frames per second for high-rate failure visualization.
Advanced Data Processing: Leading numerical expertise in SHPB data analysis to rigorously account for wave dispersion and bar viscoplasticity effects.

Dynamic and impact testing

We evaluate material and structural performance under rapid transient loads, cyclic vibrations, shock waves, and high-energy impacts.

Drop-Weight Impact: Falling weight impact testing (-20°C to +120°C, 2.5 J to 588 J) engineered for inducing precision Barely Visible Impact Damage (BVID) in composite laminates.
Pendulum Impact: High-capacity 900-Joule pendulum hammer for Charpy and Izod impact toughness evaluation across extreme temperature ranges (-100°C to +100°C).
Vibration & Acoustics: Dynamic analysis including tap-testing, vibrating beam rigs, particle damping, active/passive vibration control, and acoustic metamaterial transmission characterisation.
Seismic & Dynamic Simulation: Shake-table dynamic excitation for scale-model civil structures and transport assemblies.

Fatigue testing

Fatigue Testing

We conduct long-term cyclic testing to determine structural longevity, crack growth behavior, and fatigue limits under realistic service loading spectrums.

Cyclic Loading Regimes: High-Cycle Fatigue (HCF) and Low-Cycle Fatigue (LCF) under tension, compression, bending, and torsional loading.
Spectrum Load Profiling: Multi-channel controllers generating realistic service spectrums, including continuous high-tonnage flight-simulation fatigue profiles and high-G maneuvers.
Rotating Machinery Fatigue: High-speed speed-cycling within vacuum chambers to simulate rotational stop-start life cycles in electric motors and turbomachinery.
Environmentally Assisted Fatigue: Integrated thermal chambers for elevated temperature fatigue assessment combined with DIC and sensor-based crack monitoring.