BRICKENDONBURY, England—Rubber Consultants, the commercial unit of the Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre, opened a new Rubber Engineering Laboratory to support manufacturers of large seismic rubber bearings.
The new 2,325-sq.-ft. lab houses a large rubber test machine that can test full-scale bearings under actual earthquake conditions as well as testing other large structural rubber-based bearings and products, according to a TARRC news release.
Commercial testing will be offered beginning in August, and ISO 17025 accredited testing for seismic isolation to EN15129 will be available by January 2020.
The new machine is able to test large engineering components such as laminated metal-rubber seismic and structural bearings with dimensions up to 1,000 millimeters in diameter, TARRC said. It can do combined testing of components in axial, shear and tilting modes of deformation.
It is capable of providing 10 meganewtons compression load and a shear load of 1 meganewton with a stroke of 1 m. The actuators are under servohydraulic control that can deliver time-history commands within the capacity of the 600kW hydraulic powerpack system.
The laboratory will provide CE marking testing services for manufacturers of these components to access the European market, TARRC said. It also houses testing equipment for tires as well as material property characterization and performance modeling.
The TARRC is the United Kingdom-based laboratory of the Malaysian Rubber Board.