We adopt a data-first mentality to provide mechanical testing solutions: Engineer Trey Leonard of Standard Mechanics, LLC

“While innovation is critical to Standard Mechanics’ business model, accuracy, repeatability, and applicability must be the foundation of any mechanical testing lab.”

Trey Leonard, founder of Standard Mechanics, LLC, was born in Huntsville, AL. He studied at Mississippi State University, completing two Bachelor of Science degrees, one in Mechanical Engineering and the other in Mathematics. He then pursued a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Mechanical Engineering at the same institution, focusing on exploring and creating new technologies for dynamic mechanical testing.

Following his graduation, Trey Leonard started Standard Mechanics, LLC in the Spring of 2021 to provide mechanical testing solutions to empower the next generation of engineers and modelers with dynamic mechanical testing data.

Standard Mechanics strives to grow the knowledge of dynamic mechanical properties in materials to optimize product performance and user experience. It provides mechanical testing services that show how design properties such as yield strength and ductility change based on the rate of loading. The company focuses on providing the highest quality mechanical data for each material at the speed it would see in service.

Standard Mechanics is headquartered in Starkville, Mississippi.

The Silicon Review reached out to Trey Leonard for an interview, and here’s his response.

Interview Highlights

Please tell us about the circumstances or events that led to the founding of Standard Mechanics, LLC.

The idea for Standard Mechanics came while I was finishing my PhD studies at Mississippi State University. My dissertation research focused on the generation of technologies that would expand the capabilities of dynamic material testing. For the past few decades, as computational technology has grown exponentially, many industries have adopted the finite element analysis technique to model and predict how their products and components would withstand the forces they experience over their lifetime. The automotive field uses this modeling method to better predict how their cars handle crashes. Researchers found that by accurately modeling the car early in the design process, they could reduce the iterations of full-scale prototypes and experiments; thus, they could reduce the time it took to get a new car model on a showroom floor while also saving money by bypassing some of the costly experiments. They also found that the validity of these models hinged on the accuracy of the material properties they used: density, strength, ductility, etc.

Over the past century, starting with John Hopkinson, a field of research has focused on studying how the speed at which something is pushed or pulled affects the point at which it will break. They found that while some materials have similar strength for a range of speeds, others would have drastic changes in their strength. Many of the early finite element models omitted this speed effect, electing to solely use standardized testing methods that test materials orders of magnitude slower than the speeds the materials would experience in their application. These slow speeds equate to testing the material at temperatures hundreds of degrees above the temperature of application.

Bertram Hopkinson and later Herbert Kolsky created the most common technique for testing materials at high speeds: the Split Hopkinson Bar or the Kolsky Bar. The Hopkinson bar has since been adopted in many research laboratories around the world, but many of them test materials above the speeds of common applications, and the few that can test close to applicable speeds are nearly 100 feet long. The research I did during my doctoral studies focused on the development of technologies to adapt the Hopkinson bar so that it can test at relevant speeds while maintaining a practical footprint. This research has led to multiple patents, including the “Compact Stress Waveguide.”

While in graduate school, I worked with a material provider who serviced multiple automotive companies. This company was in dire need to have dynamic mechanical tests run to qualify their material for their automotive customers, and they had no other option but to look at university labs that had acquired a Hopkinson bar. This is when I realized that there was a market opportunity to provide dynamic material testing at relevant speeds as a service to companies as they begin to adopt the finite element modeling mindset. Many companies have the need for the data but cannot justify the high cost of purchasing and running a Hopkinson bar. The field of dynamic mechanical testing was saturated with universities or other research labs requiring large projects with long lead times to justify working with an outside company to have tests run on their equipment. By leveraging the technologies I developed while in school, I created Standard Mechanics in Spring 2021 with a vision for it to be the first company to prioritize bringing the most accurate and relevant dynamic mechanical testing services to the market.

Q. As a premier testing laboratory, what are Standard Mechanics’ key focus areas?

Standard Mechanics focuses on providing mechanical testing solutions. This means we strive to satisfy any mechanical testing needs, whether this takes the form of a standardized test that has been run hundreds of thousands of times before or a custom test that requires the creation of a test that has never been run before.

While innovation is critical to Standard Mechanics’ business model, accuracy, repeatability, and applicability must be the foundation of any mechanical testing lab. We provide niche and custom mechanical testing solutions, but we also provide standardized mechanical tests that are used to qualify products; therefore, each of our solutions, whether custom or standardized, must meet or exceed the same level of calibration and validation requirements.

Q. What strategies do you have in place to encourage innovation in your company?

We adopt a data-first mentality to provide mechanical testing solutions. We welcome customers who may not know which test they need or what type of equipment is needed, but they know the data they need. We strive to prove that if the mechanical test can be done, Standard Mechanics can do it. This leads to constant creative problem solving to find the best solution to provide a mechanical testing solution, whether it is creating a custom fixture to integrate into current equipment, sourcing and purchasing a new piece of equipment, or designing a new test stand from scratch to meet our customer needs.

Q. Can you provide us with one or two success stories, detailing specific client challenges and how Standard Mechanics’ solutions contributed to their success?

By having a data-first mentality, Standard Mechanics has helped many companies that required unique mechanical testing solutions. One power tool company was interested in characterizing the axial loading of their hammer drill and how this loading correlated to the fracture of concrete. We agreed on a testing method that utilized a ten-foot custom load cell that had the ability to attach different chisel bits that were used with the power tool. The method also used a high-speed camera to visualize how far the chisel tip penetrated the concrete with each pulse. The test setup was able to accurately capture the loads produced by the power tool and the displacement of the chisel tip, both of which were used in models to help design future accessories for the power tool.

A market-leading electronics company that produces consumer electronics, such as cell phones and laptops, wanted to explore the dynamic strength and flexibility of the materials they use in their printed circuit boards. Flexibility or flexure testing is not common in the field of dynamic testing, so we developed a custom fixture that could be integrated into a compression Hopkinson bar system to induce bending in a flat material. While the fixture produced a design challenge, measuring the resulting forces presented its own challenge as the resulting testing loads were much below the resolution of the compression Hopkinson bar system. We were able to source a high-frequency, high-resolution piezoelectric load cell that could also be integrated into the Hopkinson bar system. With the custom fixture and piezo-electric load cell, the system could accurately test the circuit board materials, providing data to inform decisions on which materials to move forward with for the next generation of consumer electronics.

Tell us, what’s next for Standard Mechanics.

Standard Mechanics strives to push the limits of dynamic mechanical testing. While this includes continuing to develop new testing capabilities, we also understand the need for a certain level of standardization. Therefore, Standard Mechanics is leading the development of the first ASTM standard for dynamic mechanical testing using Hopkinson bars to ensure the field of dynamic testing has a method to increase the accuracy and repeatability of dynamic testing data produced across laboratories.

We are also in the process of becoming an ISO-accredited mechanical testing laboratory in the early part of 2024. This will further set us apart from any other mechanical testing laboratory that can provide dynamic mechanical testing services.

“By leveraging the technologies I developed while in school, I created Standard Mechanics in Spring 2021 with a vision for it to be the first company to prioritize bringing the most accurate and relevant dynamic mechanical testing services to the market.”