Development of a low-cost tension-compression equipment

Abstract

The cost of a typical tension-compression equipment is too high so that only a few Civil Engineering (CE) Schools can afford to purchase it. There is, therefore, a need to design and fabricate a low-cost tension compression equipment which CE schools can afford to buy. An applied research project was undertaken to find ways to make such a type of equipment available. The study resulted in the fabrication of a low-cost equipment that could be used for small size tension-compression testing. The results of the testing were not as accurate compared with that of the Universal Testing Machine. Nevertheless, the equipment serves the purpose of letting the students understand the process of testing and provides a solution to the need of Engineering Schools for an affordable tension-compression equipment for their Materials Testing Laboratory.