The development of software tools for tensile testing at SCK.CEN

For tensile testing, an integrated software solution was developed at SCK CEN. All data related to a specimen are kept in a single file. This information is stored in text format. Specimen dimensions and test parameters are submitted to this database with the aid of HTML pages. A general purpose Windows-based data acquisition tool to retrieve test data from the Instron test bench and add the captured data to the database was also written. Analysing test results is done with a separate module written in C++. The analysis tool is fully automatic and is capable of determining the yield, ultimate and fracture point in most of the cases. OLE-based tools to generate Excel reports and summary tables are also included.