EN 1608 Tensile Test of Parallel Faces of Insulation Material

Thermal insulation products are used extensively in the building and construction sector. This European standard dictates the procedure and equipment required to find the tensile properties of insulating materials, specifically when undergoing loading parallel to the faces of the material. These properties are important for discovering the ability of the material to withstand tensile forces, which can occur during transport or in their final application. The required results are the tensile strength of the material. A 3300 or 5900 dual column frame is recommended for testing. The vertical test daylight of the load frame is important as the test fixture and specimen effective vertical length at the start of test is large.

The challenges of testing to this standard are:

• Performing a tensile test according to the specifications of the standard
• Recording a the required amount of data points to capture the force deflection curve accurately

• Performing the tests according to the specifications of the standard - Instron Custom Solutions engineers have designed a custom tension fixture in order to adhere to the stringent requirements of the tensile gripping fixture as stated in EN 1608.
• Recording the required amount of data points- Bluehill^® Universal allows the user to adjust the data sampling rate of the software up to 1 kHz, in order to capture the most important data points.

It is important to review EN 1608 in order to fully understand the test setup, procedure, and results requirements.