What is a mechanical tester?

A Mechanical Tester is a device used to test the durability of various materials including metals and biological tissues. It does so by issuing compression tests on given samples. As it does so, the device records the compression force and displacement of the sample at any given time from a pre-defined origin. The device does so using transducers which are equipped to the system, particularly a Load Cell (to measure the compression force) and a Linear Variable Differential Transformer (lvdt; to measure displacement). The data is recorded using a Data Acquisition Board and is sent through a usb port to a computer, after which the data is plotted using a custom software. More information about our mechanical tester may be found at our wiki, dap.cooper.edu, as well as on daleshort.cc.