Laboratory Testing Inc. services

Hardness testing measures a material’s strength by determining resistance to penetration. The hardness test is extremely useful in material selection because it provides a hardness value which indicates how easily a material can be machined and how well the material will wear. Hardness testing is also valuable in making decisions about treatments and coatings.The hardness test is usually performed using test machines equipped with an indentor that is forced into the test material over a certain amount of time. Laboratory Testing Inc. performs a number of hardness test methods that use the indentation process:

Impact testing determines a material’s ability to absorb the energy of forceful impacts. This destructive test involves fracturing a notched specimen and measuring the amount of energy absorbed by the material during fracture to indicate toughness or impact strength. Impact testing at Laboratory Testing Inc. is performed by the charpy testing method. This entails striking a notched specimen with a falling weight at a series of temperatures to show the relationship of ductile to brittle transition in absorbed energy.Since iron and all other body-centered cubic metals undergo a transition from ductile behavior at higher temperatures to brittle behavior at lower temperatures, this test is required today for steel hull plate for ships, nuclear plant pressure vessels, forgings for electric power plant generator rotors and other important steel products.