Facilities and Equipment

The NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting includes:

• Two tools funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009:
  • High-rate servohydraulic testing machine – For mechanical testing at rates between quasi static (slow) to beyond crash testing; fills the gap for test data on advanced materials of interest to the automotive industry
  • Next-generation metal formability system – Unique system designed to test sheet metal along any path in strain space relevant to metal forming operations. Simultaneous in situ stress, strain, and temperature mapping along with the ability to change paths in strain space without unloading the sample
• Marciniak testing system with two punch sizes, xray diffraction and DIC
• New sample preparation area including plasma cutting, water jet cutting, and welding
• SEM, TEM, EBSD, XRD, OIM, optical, neutron diffraction, sample prep for all these techniques, annealing ovens and furnaces
• Computational facilities in NCAL and Center for Theoretical and Computational Materials Science (CTCMS) cluster
• Space for staff and guest researchers near labs
• Located near the Dynamic Plasticity Laboratory in Building 231