Piping systems made of spun glass fibre reinforced polyester resins are mainly used for drinking water and waste water pipes and in irrigation and drainage systems. The pipe diameter can vary between 150 mm and 4200 mm.

As the pipes are exposed to high pressure loads during installation, determining the mechanical properties is of central importance. This is done by testing the ring stiffness. Ring stiffness describes the strength behaviour of plastic pipes. Characteristic values are the crown compressive strength according to DIN EN 1228 as well as the compressive and circumferential elongation. All values are determined in both the circumferential and longitudinal directions.

Hegewald & Peschke offers two machines for this test:

Special testing machine inspekt S-XL 600 kN, test room height 5000mm

The 6 m high special testing machine S-XL 600 kN was specially developed for testing glass fibre reinforced plastic pipes. The special testing machine is used, for example, to test approx. 300 mm wide pipe strips with a wall thickness of 150 mm and a diameter of up to 4200 mm. The elasticity test is carried out non-destructively in two steps (2% and 5%).

For plastic pipes with a specified ring stiffness, the average pipe deformation of the inner pipe diameter must not exceed a certain value. The test is carried out at normal room temperature.

Special testing machine SH 500 kN with adjustable test space

The inspekt SH 500 kN 4-column testing machine with a central loading spindle up to 500 kN can test pipe diameters up to 4000 mm. The pipe sections are "rolled" into the test space at ground level. For testing pipes with small diameters, it is possible to drive the complete yoke by means of an electric motor into the respective required test position.  The LabMaster materials testing software developed by Hegewald & Peschke takes over management of the measurement data from external testing devices, such as burst strength testers, thickness and width gauges and Vicat devices.