Interactive computerized mechanical-testing measurement system

The metallurgy laboratory at the Nuclear Research Center-Negev (NRCN) deals with investigating the mechanical properties of materials. It is equipped with three universal testing machines designed for manual operation, and the data are accumulated on a chart recorder. The data analysis in this configuration is long (eight hours per sample) and tedious work. The authors decided to connect the machines to a computer which would acquire and analyze the data and store the results. The approach outlined in this work could be used in laboratories having non-computerized testing machines and with only modest budgets for upgrading the instrumentation.