Development of a biaxial tensile testing machine for pulsed neutron experiments

A biaxial tensile testing method has been used to get macroscopic information on elastoplastic deformation of a thin steel specimen and improve the accuracy of plastic processing of steel materials. We newly developed a biaxial tensile testing machine for pulsed neutron experiments (BTM-NEU) to provide the microscopic crystallographic information of steel materials under biaxial load and correlate it with the macroscopic mechanical properties of the materials. The performance of the BTM-NEU was experimentally evaluated with cold-rolled mild steel and hot-rolled high-tensile-strength steel materials and compared with that of a standard biaxial tensile testing machine (BTM-std) as follows. • The BTM-NEU can test an ISO-standardized cruciform specimen as the BTM-std and its performance is equivalent to that of the BTM-std. • The BTM-NEU has excellent long-time reliability and stability necessary for pulsed neutron experiments, especially Bragg-edge neutron imaging experiments. • The BTM-NEU can be applied to pulsed neutron experiments using a Bragg-edge imaging method.