Element Materials Technology Hitchin Ltd

MERL is an independent UK company founded in 1986 by a group of polymer scientists and engineers, providing R&D, laboratory testing and consultancy services on polymer materials for engineering systems and structures. We have a client base of several hundred companies worldwide covering all industry sectors.

We are now a leading international provider of complete innovative polymer engineering solutions. The company provides complete testing solutions from concept/feasibility and materials selection to disposal and re-use. MERL is registered to ISO 9001 in the UK by BSI.

Services

MERL offers a range of independent services and consultancy with a multi-disciplinary team of highly qualified and experienced staff.

• Specialist knowledge of non-metallic and related materials

• Complete or partial product development programmes

• Materials testing: static, creep, stress relaxation, fatigue, friction and wear

• Mechanical testing of components and structures with instrumented multi- loading

• Finite element analysis, stress analysis

• Failure and design analysis

• Chemical fluid resistance tests and durability assessment in hostile environments

• Independent inspection, consultancy and expert witnessing

• Materials development and selection

• Rubber compounding and recipe development

• Small scale mixing and prototype rubber component manufacture

• Design & manufacture of specialist bespoke test equipment

• Instrumentation development for machine and data acquisition using Labview®

• Tailored polymer training cours es

Materials

MERL expertise is in engineering polymers (adhesives, rubber, thermoplastics, thermoplastic elastomers and composites - polymer composites or reinforced plastics). Related materials are metallics (metal forming and structural bonding), concrete, reinforced ceramics, carbon carbon composites, intermetallics, functionally gradient materials and MMCs. Various materials research programmes are performed with the above material types. Work includes materials testing and evaluation and design analysis.

Materials knowledge combined with engineering know-how is used to solve problems through the supply chain from materials selection to design and manufacture to recycling/end-of-life considerations.