Materials
Welcome to Materials Engineering. Material testing and inspection. DUME provides access to user friendly testing, characterisation and inspection for any solid material. Tensile testing, hardness testing, surface profilometry and SEM is available for students, industry and the wider Deakin University community.
Whether you want to learn the technology and methods yourself, or need some additional expertise on your next project, we are here to help.
Spaces and open times
The Lab is only accessible with swipe card access on weekdays from 8am – 6pm. Approval of swipe card access applications requires completion of level 2 local area induction.
Consultations: Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11am during trimester.
The Lab consists of six laboratory spaces:
- Materials Test Lab – KE2.101
- Heat Treatment Lab – KE2.101.01
- Metallography Lab – KE2.101.02
- Engineering Science Lab – KE2.103
- Microscopy Lab – KE2.103.02
- Corrosion Lab – KE2.104
These laboratory spaces contain a number of different pieces of equipment as outlined below. Usage of some equipment must be booked in the outlook calendar using the provided email addresses.
Other general laboratory equipment available;
- Analytical balances
- Water quality meters such as pH, conductivity, ion selective electrodes
- Ultrasonicator
- Dessicators
- Magnetic stirrers
Materials Team
Rachel Rossau
Technical Officer
KE2.103.03
03 5227 3345
rachel.rossau@deakin.edu.au
Access the lab
To obtain access to the lab and its equipment – please refer to Commencing a Project
You must have completed the following prior to using the laboratories.
Equipment Information and Resources
Hardness testing
| Equipment | Struers DuraJet | Struers DuraScan |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Measures the permanent depth of indentation produced by a force/load on an indenter to calculate resistance to indentation (hardness). | Uses optics to measure the size of indentation produced by a force/load on an indenter to calculate resistance to indentation (hardness). |
| Application(s) |
|
|
| Booking address | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Rockwell Hardness Tester | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Vickers Hardness tester |
| Location | KE2.101 | KE2.101 |
| Resources and information | See Hardness Testing |
Load Frames testing
| Equipment | Instron Load Frame | |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Applies load to the sample to calculate various mechanical properties. | |
| Application(s) |
| |
| Booking address | 10kN Load Capacity | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Instron 10kN |
| 50kN Load Capacity | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Instron 50kN | |
| Location | KE2.101 | |
| Resources and information | ||
Impact testing
| Equipment | Charpy Impact Tester |
|---|---|
| Description | Determines the amount of energy absorbed by a material during fracture. |
| Application(s) |
|
| Booking address | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 |
| Location | KE2.101 |
| Resources and information | For assistance, contact the Materials team. |
Materialographic preparation
| Equipment | Furnaces | Struers Accutom | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Applies extreme heat to alter physical or chemical properties. | Allows cutting and thin sectioning of specimens whilst minimising surface deformation. | |
| Application(s) |
|
| |
| Booking address |
*G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101.01 Small Furnace *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101.01 Medium Furnace 1 *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101.01 Medium Furnace 2 | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Precision cut-off machine | |
| Location | KE2.101.01 | KE2.101 | |
| Equipment | Struers CitoPress | Struers LaboPol | Struers Tegramin |
| Description | Applies temperature and force to rapidly embed specimens and create a mount. | Grinding removes damaged or deformed surface material, while limiting the amount of additional surface deformation. Polishing removes damage remaining on the surface from previous steps. | |
| Application(s) |
|
|
|
| Booking address | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101.02 Hot-mounting press | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101.02 Grinding machine | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Precision cut-off machine |
| Location | KE2.101.02 | KE2.101.02 | KE2.101.02 |
| Resources and information | |||
Microscopy
| Equipment | Olympus Macroscope | Olympus Optical Microscope |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Uses visible light and a system of lenses to magnify images of small samples up to 4.5X | Uses visible light and a system of lenses to magnify images of small samples from 5X to 100X |
| Application(s) |
| |
| Booking address | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Macro-scope | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Optical Microscope |
| Location | KE2.101 | KE2.101 |
| Equipment | Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) | Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) |
| Description | Produces micron scale images of sample surface by scanning with a focused electron beam. Signals produced contain information about topography and composition. | Analyses elemental composition and concentration by scanning a focused X-ray beam that emits characteristic X-rays on interaction with the specimen. |
| Application(s) |
|
|
| Booking address | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.103.02 SEM | |
| Location | KE2.103.02 | |
| Resources and information | See Microscopy | |
Optical Profilometry
| Equipment | Alicona |
|---|---|
| Description | Combines the small depth of focus of an optical system with vertical scanning to provide topographical and color information from the variation of focus. |
| Application(s) |
|
| Booking address | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.101 Alicona |
| Location | KE2.101 |
| Information and resources |
Thermal Properties testing
| Equipment | Perkin Elmer Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) |
|---|---|
| Description | Measures the difference in the amount of heat required to increase the temperature of a sample and reference as a function of temperature. |
| Application(s) |
|
| Specifications | Single furnace Heat flux DSC Minimum sample analysis temperature -65°C Maximum sample analysis temperature 400°C Heating rates of 0.1 to 100 °C/min in steps of 0.1 °C/min. |
| Booking address | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.103 DSC |
| Location | KE2.103 |
| Resources and information |
Melt Flow Indexer
| Equipment | Melt Flow Indexer (MFI) |
|---|---|
| Description | Measure the resistance to flow (viscosity) of the polymer melt at a given temperature under a given force for a predetermined period of time. This is based on GB3682-2000 test method. It is not only suitable for high melting temperature engineering plastics such as polycarbonate, polyarylsulfone, fluorine plastic and nylon, but also suitable for some other low temperature plastic products which are made up of polyethylene(PE), polystyrene(PS), polypropylene(PP), ABS resin, and polyoxymethylene. |
| Application(s) |
|
| Specifications | Extruding and discharging part:
Counterbalance mass relative error ≤0.5% Standard test load (eight classes):
|
| Booking address | *G SEBE ENG Lab Eqpmt KE2.103 MFI |
| Location | KE2.103 |
| Resources and information |