Miniaturization of Test Specimen for Composites

The objective behind the development of miniaturization or small specimen test technology is to reduce the cost and quantity of material involved during the characterization of the material. The idea of the development of miniaturization took attention when the nuclear industry starts developing as these materials are very costly and it is not economically feasible to waste large amount of these materials for the sole purpose of testing. The second factor which promotes the miniaturization is that the working of machine is not affected while at the same time its material is being tested. At present, the idea of miniaturization is being applied to other materials also. The miniaturization of standards for metals has been done successfully in the past. For composites, not much work has been done. In the chapter, the specimen size effects on tensile properties of glass fiber composite have been identified by varying the length and width simultaneously and have established a relationship between the ASTM standard specimen and the small size specimen.