May/June_AMP_Digital

A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | M A Y / J U N E 2 0 2 0 2 5 TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT Instron 6800 Series table model universal testing machine. TAKING THE GUESSWORK OUT OF AUTOMOTIVE ALUMINUM TESTING As demand for adherence to VDA standards increases, aluminum testing equipment keeps pace. W hen companies test materi- als or components to a stan- dard, they usually test to the applicable national standards body ac- cepted by their company’s country of origin. For example, a European com- pany will generally test to International Organization for Standardization (ISO) requirements, an American company to ASTM International guidelines, and a company in Asia to Japanese Indus- trial Standards (JIS). Nowhere is this more obvious than in the automotive industry, with Honda using JIS stan- dards, Volkswagen using ISO, and Ford testing to ASTM. Suppliers of these ma- jor OEMs, who often sell to multiple automotive manufacturers, can find it challenging to maintain the expertise necessary to test to all of these differ- ent requirements in addition to meet- ing their own internal standards. Instron has recently seen a surge in customers required to test to “VDA” testing standards. The VDA, or Verband der Automobilindustrie, is the German association of the automotive industry. According to its website, the VDA “com- bines the strengths of the automotive industry and consolidates the manufac- turers of passenger cars, trucks, vans, and buses, the suppliers of parts and accessories, as well as the makers of trailers and bodies.” [1] The VDA has assembled many committees to create their own test- ing recommendations, mainly to en- sure that test results are as accurate as possible and are comparable across the multiple labs who are testing to the requirements. For uniaxial and form- ability testing of aluminum, the VDA committees partner with the Gesamt- verband der Aluminiumindustrie e.V (GDA), which is an association of alumi- num companies that produce raw alu- minum or aluminum products. Typically, the VDA requirements are adaptations to existing ISO stan- dards such as ISO6892-1 (tensile test- ing) or ISO 7438 (bend testing) with much more stringent requirements that aim to reduce variability between labs. Instron has worked with these com- mittees to provide a specific setup of Bluehill Universal software which is ap- proved by the VDA and GDA commit- tees to meet their exacting standards. Instron has also designed special fixtur- ing to meet their standards. Testing standards have been de- veloped over many years by a large committee of interested parties, includ- ing producers or companies such as In- stron who supply solutions to meet the requirements of the standards. The pace at which these standards advance can be incredibly slow, with new revi- sions being published approximately every five years. Whenever issues arise between revisions they are debated by the committee and, if changes are ac- cepted, added to the next revision of the standard. It is important to the users of the standard that any changes do not make their historical results invalid or impossible to compare against, which means that any alteration needs to be made as inoffensive as possible, even if it is generally accepted as being a posi- tive change. For example, ISO 6892-1 in 2009 added recommendations to test with a tolerance on the strain rate (Method A) which was the result of an incredibly detailed conversation about how to im- prove its predecessor, the widely adopt- ed EN10002 standard. Although many industry experts agree that the strain rate control method is the “better” method and preferred way to test, they needed to ensure maximum compat- ibility for all existing users of the prior versions, and therefore could not re- move the existing stress control meth- od from EN10002. In an effort to simplify this com- plexity and improve repeatability of