Custom Testing: When Standardized Testing Won't Do
Testing and Research Facilities for Your Unique Requirements
It is often necessary to better understand materials at actual process conditions. Characteristics such as flammability, reactivity, or thermal instability are critical to understanding how to safely design and operate under actual process and reaction conditions. Small-scale testing can produce screening-level results and can be conducted, for most materials, in standard laboratory facilities. Standardized tests are valuable but do not always meet the needs for understanding a process.
As the experimental sample size increases or the experiment needs to be conducted remotely or under adverse conditions (high oxygen concentrations, higher pressures or temperatures), standard facilities will often fail to generate the results needed to get accurate data. Scale-up activities and other requirements may also dictate the need for tests using more material than is typically allowed in a laboratory environment. Of course, the danger from laboratory-scale explosions could expose operators to blast overpressure fragments, toxic or other hazards. We have the facilities and expertise to generate the data and analysis you need for your unique requirements.
Unique Testing Capabilities
DEKRA testing and research facilities include expertise at modifying standardized tests and leveraging "barricade cells, bunkers, and open field test areas" for the study/testing of energetic or reactive materials and systems. These test areas are equipped with water, electricity, and gas, high speed/high definition cameras and data acquisition systems. The experiment can be viewed from a safe control room area.
Large Scale Testing Facility
DEKRA maintains extensive standard laboratory and large-scale testing facilities for hazard analysis and other needs. Our 100-acre test site is staffed by personnel with extensive experience in energetic materials and systems testing and analysis. This unique facility allows us to safely perform reactive, explosive and energetic tests that are not otherwise suitable for most laboratories.
Examples of Solutions
There are many reasons to ask for a customized approach to a test, some solutions include the following:
- Standardized tests adapted for high temperatures and pressures
- Standardized tests adapted for Oxygen enriched environments
- Large scale UN/DOT testing for explosive and reactive materials
- Fire extinguishing materials and techniques
- Incident investigation simulation
- Process scale up / process upset study
- Pilot plant studies
- Transition from reation to detonation or deflagration studies
