Mechanical Property Testing of Hydrogels
Hydrogels have a wide range of applications from biomedicine to food science, due to their water-rich composition and biocompatibility. However, most hydrogels are soft materials that exhibit poor mechanical properties, which greatly limit their applications in various fields. Therefore, it is very necessary to design hydrogels with excellent mechanical properties. Mechanical property testing of hydrogels is an important part of evaluating the success of hydrogel improvement, and has significance in evaluating the failure degree and life of hydrogels. Alfa Chemistry is committed to providing our customers with professional mechanical property testing services for hydrogels. Our team has many years of experience and is capable of delivering reliable results to our customers.
Testing Methods
Alfa Chemistry provides consumers with professional mechanical property testing services for hydrogels using the most common testing methods, including but not limited to the following.
The most common method to evaluate the mechanical properties of hydrogels is uniaxial tensile testing, which is widely accepted by the scientific community to determine the mechanical toughness and ultimate tensile strength of various hydrogels. Furthermore, uniaxial tensile testing plays an important role in inferring the mechanical toughening mechanism for anisotropic filler-embedded nanocomposite hydrogels.
Bulge testing can reflect the plastic flow behavior of hydrogels. In this method, the sample architecture is circular in shape (diaphragm-like), tightly held at the outer fringe of the sample holder, followed by uniform stretching via an external force applied laterally. One restriction to sample preparation is that the thickness to bulge diameter ratio should be small enough to eradicate the bending effect of hydrogels during clamping.
Compressive testing is another destructive experiment to evaluate the load-bearing and compressive fracture toughness of hydrogels. This testing is generally carried out by placing the hydrogel sample between parallel plates. The main advantages of compressive testing are the ease of sample preparation and the unconditional limitation of sample geometry.
Indentation testing is actually a single-point compressive testing where the surface deflection has been quantified. In this method, a force displacement transducer is connected to an indentation probe. This arrangement results in a force displacement plot from which the elastic modulus of hydrogels can be calculated, while the residual impression can be measured after the test has been completed.
Our Advantages
- We offer mechanical property testing for a wide range of hydrogels, ranging from pure hydrogels to composite hydrogels.
- We have reliable testing methods to ensure the accuracy of mechanical property data.
- We provide flexible and targeted technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to reduce your time costs.
- We offer a complete analysis report, including method interpretation, data, result files and other information you need.
Service Process
Please kindly note that our products and services are for research use only.
