Long-Term Creep and Embedding Test Platform

Not every joint fails by turning. Some lose clamping force with the fastener never rotating at all — through embedding, creep, relaxation and micro-slip, driven by time, temperature and load. A few microns of embedding can consume the entire preload of a small-screw joint.

No test standard covers these mechanisms. No purchasable dataset describes them. The only way to know how your joint holds preload over months and years is to test and measure it — on your real joint, in numbers that mean something. That is what this long-term test platform is for.

Built as a programme, not a bench

Long-term behaviour cannot be studied one specimen at a time. A statistically valid answer takes hundreds of joints, measured over months, prepared identically, handled identically, with no operator variation. The platform is therefore conceived as a fully automated validation programme:

Your real joints — carried in the Vibrationmaster Universal Specimen Carrier — are prepared, tightened and measured under full automation, then stored by the hundreds or thousands in stable, temperature-controlled storage. Robotic handling moves each USC carrier between exposure and measurement: pure time at controlled temperature, thermal cycling, dynamic loading under temperature, single-event shock — separately or in combination, by test design matching your real world exactly. Ultrasonic sensing reads the clamping force in each joint without ever disturbing it. Every test ends with a defined final measurement, and every tested joint remains traceable and recoverable for physical analysis.

The result is what no laboratory routine can produce: the measured preload evolution of your real joint, across a statistically valid population — a structured dataset ready for design decisions and machine-learning models alike.

Why it pays

When you cannot measure how much clamping force your joint will still hold in a year, you must assume the worst — and design for it. Larger fasteners than the function needs. Higher clamping forces than the parts would like. Margin stacked on margin, weight and cost added joint by joint.

Tested and measured, the picture changes: the residual clamping force of your real joint becomes a known quantity, and assumed worst cases give way to quantified safety margins. That knowledge cannot be bought; it can only be generated.

Start where you are

The same architecture scales down. Manual and semi-automated configurations bring the methodology within reach of a first programme — and grow into full automation as your question grows.

Tell us which joints must still be tight in five years. We'll guide you from there.

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