Royce equipment but better...

Over the past month, a number of upgrades have been made to our extensive range of equipment and facilities. These improvements will further extend our testing capabilities and widen what we are able to offer to academia and industry for research projects and Access Schemes.

These upgrades include:

A thermal cycling rig: a high-temperature furnace with automatic cycling capabilities for furnace cyclic oxidation testing in air.

The addition of this automated furnace will allow for more complex geometry samples to be tested, and for us to extend the temperature range of our testing capabilities up to 1700°. Moreover, the furnace has a preinstallation for gases, which can be used to add water vapour to the testing, something which is in increased demand for testing of materials for end-use of H2.

An integrated furnace and glove box facility: a state-of-the-art high-temperature corrosion furnace, to be set up within a glove box for inert environment testing.

This equipment will enable advanced research into molten salt corrosion, focusing on material degradation in extreme conditions critical for nuclear reactors and concentrated solar power (CSP) systems. By studying corrosion mechanisms in advanced alloys and coatings, we aim to develop materials with enhanced durability and performance.

Submerged liquid nitrogen upgrade to the high cycle cryogenic corrosion fatigue rig.

This upgrade will allow mechanical testing to be performed in liquid nitrogen with submerged extensometry. It will also include the capability to measure crack growth on submerged CT specimens. This capability will expand our limited capability of cryogenic mechanical testing which will be critical given the ever-increasing drive to cleaner, hydrogen-based systems.

A turbo pump for multi-source sputter physical vapour deposition.

This equipment is used to deposit a range of polymer, metallic or ceramic coatings with a controlled thickness and microstructure for an array of extreme environments. This pump will significantly improve the vacuum quality and stability of the sputtering process, therefore helping minimise the presence of contaminants. This is essential for producing reliable, reproducible, high-performance coatings for our extreme environments programme.

All of our equipment is available for use, subsidised by the Henry Royce Institute, for anyone within academia or industry with an idea or project they would like to investigate. For further information, please contact royce@cranfield.ac.uk.