Environmental tester development. Progress report

The primary objective is to further develop the environmental tensometer toward commercialization by making key technical refinements, improving the controlling and data-logging software, and testing the system in a potential customer`s laboratory. Progress has been made in Tasks 1 (completed), Task 2 (one half completed), Task 4 (one half completed) of the original work plan. In this report a detailed description of the work completed on the second prototype is explained in detail. A second prototype of the Environmental Tester, a device capable of tensile tests of fibers in controlled environments and at high temperatures, has been designed and is currently being fabricated. The first prototype includes six integrated systems; the testing system, the furnace system, the vacuum system, the mass flow control system, and the computer data acquisition and control (CDAC) system