Materials testing goes extreme

2015 Summer School expert meeting – New HPV-X2 ultra-high-speed camera

»Be a millionaire – Materials testing goes extreme« was the working title of the HPV Summer School 2015 at the beginning of July in the historical city of Potsdam, Germany. 15 experts in ultra-high-speed materials testing, materials research as well as micro and nanofluid systems used this occasion for in-depth exchange of experiences.

Figure 1: Lecture event

Some of the topics leading to particularly lively discussions were on research of novel composite materials like CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastics) at the German University of Dortmund, HDPE (high-density polyethylene) at the Federal Institute for Materials Research in Berlin, as well as ‘droplets and microbubbles’ research at the Technical University of Twente in the Netherlands. These technical presentations provided an up-to-date overview on ultra- high-speed investigations at several research institutes.

Figure 2: HPV-X2

An additional highlight of the first day was the experimental part in the afternoon where Nobuyuki Tokuoka, an R&D engineer of Shimadzu’s technical department for ultra-high-speed cameras introduced the new HPV-X2 ultra-high-speed camera. The HPV-X2 not only continues the tradition of its previous versions but also outperforms them in crucial technical data. In this way, the HPV-X2 can record up to 10 million frames per second and features extremely high sensitivity with a newly developed FTCMOS2 sensor. Particularly under poor lighting conditions, this sensor achieves a significantly improved recording quality compared to all other cameras in this performance class, of course without ‘blooming’ effects. Furthermore, it is possible to synchronize two cameras allowing high-speed recording from two observation directions.

Figure 3: Bus tour ‘Alter Fritz.’ The first day’s program was concluded with a tour of the Prussian King ‘Alter Fritz’ castle in a historical bus, looking at Potsdam and its famous castles and parks from a different perspective with charming and humorous anecdotes and stories.

On the second day, the group visited the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM, Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung) in Berlin-Steglitz.

Figure 4: High-speed experiment at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing

At the Institute’s Division 5.2, real-life experiments on material behavior under high-speed conditions were carried out using a Shimadzu HPV series ultra-high-speed camera.