Lightweight structures are essential for space missions and space exploration, yet weight reduction cannot come at the expense of reliability. Understanding how advanced materials behave under repeated loading and extreme temperature cycles is therefore a central challenge in designing components for satellites, landers and deployable systems.

Assoc. Prof. Michal K. Budzik (Department of Mechanical and Production Engineering, AU SpaCe, AU Materials) has secured a Research Infrastructure grant from the Carlsberg Foundation to establish electrodynamic fatigue testing platform with integrated axial and axial–torsional loading and thermal control. The system will enable high-amplitude and high-frequency fatigue experiments across a wide temperature range, closely reflecting the mechanical and thermal conditions materials experience in, for example, orbit.

For the AU Space Centre, the new facility represents a strategic leap forward. Many candidate materials for space applications—architected composites, additively manufactured alloys, coatings and multifunctional interfaces—are designed for minimal mass, yet their long-term durability in harsh environments remains insufficiently understood. The new platform will allow AU researchers to map fatigue damage, crack initiation, and lifetime-limiting mechanisms with unprecedented precision.

“Lightweighting is a defining constraint in space engineering,” Michal explains. “But reliability is equally critical. At the core of this application are materials whose geometry and architecture contribute directly to both low mass and long-term endurance, and this infrastructure will allow us to design and test them.”

The facility will support collaborative research across AU’s Natural, Technical and Health sciences and will reinforce AU’s strategic presence in advanced materials and space-relevant technologies.

Find the grant announcement here: Platform for fatigue testing and fatigue-driven materials design | Carlsbergfondet.dk