David Kirkaldy was a Scottish engineer who pioneered the testing of materials as a service to engineers during the Victorian period. He established a test house in Southwark, London and built a large hydraulic tensile test machine, or tensometer for examining the mechanical properties of components, such as their tensile strength and tensile modulus or stiffness. Southwark or The Borough is an area of south-east London in the London Borough of Southwark, situated 1 London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. A tensometer is a device used to evaluate the Young's modulus (how much it stretches under strain of a material Tensile strength \sigma_{UTS} or S_U is the Stress at which a material breaks or permanently deforms Stiffness is the resistance of an elastic body to Deformation by an applied Force.
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Career
David Kirkaldy was born near Dundee in Scotland in 1820. Dundee (Dùn Dèagh is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and fully named as Dundee City, one of Scotland's 32 local government council Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. He worked at Robert Napier’s Vulcan Foundry Works in Glasgow, and moved from workshop to drawing office. As a result of the industrial revolution, new materials were being developed such as steel to replace cast iron and wrought iron. Steel is an Alloy consisting mostly of Iron, with a Carbon content between 0 Cast iron usually refers to grey cast iron, but identifies a large group of Ferrous Alloys which solidify with a Eutectic. QtubIronPillarJPG|thumb|right| Iron pillar at Delhi India containing 98% wrought iron]] Wrought iron is commercially pure Iron. The properties of these materials were not well understood. In conjunction with his work for Napier and Sons, Kirkaldy undertook a long series of tensile load tests between 1858 and 1861. He published his Results of an Experimental Inquiry into the Comparative Tensile Strength and other properties of various kinds of Wrought-Iron and Steel in 1862.
Testing Materials
Kirkaldy left Napier in 1861 and over the next two and a half years studied existing testing techniques and designed his own testing machine. Entirely at his own expense, he commissioned this machine from the Leeds firm of Greenwood & Batley, closely supervising its production. Leeds ( is located on the River Aire in West Yorkshire, England Aggrieved over the slow rate of manufacture, after fifteen months he had it delivered to London still unfinished, in September 1865. The testing machine is 47 feet 7 inches long, weighs some 116 tons, and was designed to work horizontally, the load applied by a hydraulic cylinder and ram. The machine is still held in working order at the Kirkaldy Museum in Southwark. Southwark or The Borough is an area of south-east London in the London Borough of Southwark, situated 1
New Testing House
The machine still exists in the old test house at Southwark (now the Kirkaldy Testing Museum), together with other equipment he developed. The Kirkaldy Testing Museum is a museum in Southwark, south London, England, located on the site of David Kirkaldy 's testing works He set up business in Southwark in 1866, performing tests for external clients on materials used in engineered structures such as bridges. The business moved to a nearby purpose-built building at 99 Southwark Street, London in 1874. The present ground floor of the building is a museum to his work, with many of his machines still in working order. The famous inscription above the door reads Facts not Opinions. With the many failed products either from his own tests or collected on site, he opened a "Black Museum" of failed products and components on the top floor of the building, but it was unfortunately destroyed in the London Blitz of 1940. The Black Museum of Scotland Yard is a famed collection of criminal Memorabilia kept at the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in London The Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941 in World War II.
He developed ways of examining the microstructures of materials using a simple optical microscope after polishing and etching specimens taken from components. The optical microscope, often referred to as the "light microscope" is a type of Microscope which uses Visible light and a system of lenses to
Tay Bridge Disaster
He famously tested many samples taken from the first Tay railway bridge for the official Inquiry on the Tay Bridge Disaster. The Tay Bridge (sometimes unofficially the Tay Rail Bridge) is a Railway Bridge approximately two and a quarter miles (three and a half kilometres He confirmed that the wrought iron tie bars failed at their connections to the cast iron columns of the bridge, when he tested intact tie bars with complete lugs still attached. QtubIronPillarJPG|thumb|right| Iron pillar at Delhi India containing 98% wrought iron]] Wrought iron is commercially pure Iron. Cast iron usually refers to grey cast iron, but identifies a large group of Ferrous Alloys which solidify with a Eutectic. The attachments were cast iron lugs which fractured at the bolt holes, and numerous fractured lugs were found after the disaster lying on the piers. The critical strengthening elements were much weaker than had been supposed by Thomas Bouch, the engineer of the first bridge. Sir Thomas Bouch (ˈbaʊtʃ ( 25 February 1822 - 30 October 1880) was a Railway Engineer in Victorian Britain They failed at about 20 tons tensile load rather than the specified 60 tons, and were a prime cause of the collapse of the bridge on December 28th, 1879. He tested the wrought iron tie bars themselves, and they proved very strong, as specified. QtubIronPillarJPG|thumb|right| Iron pillar at Delhi India containing 98% wrought iron]] Wrought iron is commercially pure Iron. The high girders also had a very high tensile strength. Tensile strength \sigma_{UTS} or S_U is the Stress at which a material breaks or permanently deforms They were found after the accident at the bottom of the Tay estuary and relatively little damaged compared with the cast iron columns which supported them.
He died in 1897, and was succeeded by his son in the family business.
Bibliography
- WG Kirkaldy, Experimental Inquiry into the Comparative Tensile Strength and other properties of various kinds of Wrought-Iron and Steel (1862).
References
- Peter R Lewis, Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay: re-investigating the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879, Tempus (2004)
External links
- Brief biography of Kirkaldy
- Kirkaldy museum
- Kirkaldy museum location
- Description of Museum
- Kirkaldy's Researches
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