Dr. Csaba Sinka,
University of Leicester
Mechanics of Materials Research Group

Over the last decade compaction simulators have undergone significant development in terms of performance, instrumentation and added capabilities in order to serve a range of purposes from material characterisation and formulation or process design to troubleshooting of manufacturing operations. Accordingly the user base has a wide range of priorities, interests and expertise. This can lead to different interpretation of the same set of data and assent of the simplest data analysis method. The experiments will have inherent limitations and the data analysis procedures will have underlying assumptions, which should be considered carefully for correct interpretations, conclusions and generalisations. This talk will review the use and interpretation of compaction simulator data and will introduce two new contributions to account for errors present in testing due to 1) elastic compliance of the testing frame, which influences the measurement of axial strain and 2) the presence on non-homogeneous stress state in the test specimen, which affects the stress-strain curve determined using dies instrumented with radial stress sensors.