Contactless and Frictionless Pure Bending

Abstract

This paper presents a new contactless and frictionless pure bending technique for material testing purposes, along with a practical realization thereof. A contactless pure bending mode is realized through the relative rotations of two clamps that are mounted on frictionless sliders. The proposed generic device allows for large rotations, cyclic loading, reversed loading, creep testing, relaxation testing and is well-suited to test different classes of materials. On top of the classical benefits for materials testing through bending, a few illustrative examples are given that emphasize the potential of this bending instrument for particular material tests.