Tensile Testing
Tensile Testing
Tensile Testing
Tensile testing, also known as tension testing, is a fundamental materials science test in which a sample is subjected to uniaxial tension until failure. The results from the test are commonly used to select a material for an application, for quality control, and to predict how a material will react under other types of forces. Properties that are directly measured via a tensile test are ultimate tensile strength, maximum elongation and reduction in area. From these measurements the following properties can also be determined Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, yield strength, and strain-hardening characteristics. TENSILE TESTS are performed for several reasons. The results of tensile tests are used in selecting materials for engineering applications. Tensile properties frequently are included in material specifications to ensure quality. Tensile properties often are measured during development of new materials and processes, so that different materials and processes can be compared. Finally, tensile properties often are used to predict the behavior of a material. Tensile Specimens: Consider the typical tensile specimen shown in Fig. 1. It has enlarged ends or shoulders for gripping. The important part of the specimen is the gage section. The cross-sectional area of the gage section is reduced relative to that of the remainder of the specimen so that deformation and failure will be localized in this region. The gage length is the region over which measurements are made and is centered within the reduced section. The distances between the ends of the gage section and the shoulders should be great enough so that the larger ends do not constrain deformation within the gage section, and the gage length should be great relative to its diameter. Otherwise, the stress state will be more complex than simple tension
Equipment:
The most common testing machine used in tensile testing is the universal testing machine. This type of machine has two crossheads; one is adjusted for the length of the specimen and the other is driven to apply tension to the test specimen. There are two types: hydraulic powered and electromagnetically powered machines. the machine must have the proper capabilities for the test specimen being tested. There are three main parameters: force capacity, speed, and precision and accuracy. Force capacity refers to the fact that the machine must be able to generate enough force to fracture the specimen. The machine must be able to apply the force quickly or slowly enough to properly mimic the actual application. Finally, the machine must be able to accurately and precisely measure the gage length and
forces applied; for instance, a large machine that is designed to measure long elongations may not work with a brittle material that experiences short elongations prior to fracturing.
Process:
The test process involves placing the test specimen in the testing machine and applying tension to it until it fractures. During the application of tension, the elongation of the gauge section is recorded against the applied force. The data is manipulated so that it is not specific to the geometry of the test sample. The elongation measurement is used to calculate the engineering strain, , using the following equation
where L is the change in gauge length, L0 is the initial gauge length, and L is the final length. The force measurement is used to calculate the engineering stress, , using the following equation
where F is the force and A is the cross-section of the gauge section. The machine does these calculations as the force increases, so that the data points can be graphed into a stress-strain curve
Stressstrain curve:
During tensile testing of a material sample, the stressstrain curve is a graphical representation of the relationship between stress, derived from measuring the load applied on the sample, and strain, derived from measuring the deformation of the sample, i.e. elongation, compression, or distortion. The slope of stress-strain curve at any point is called the tangent modulus; the slope of the elastic (linear) portion of the curve is a property used to characterize materials and is known as the Young's modulus. The area under the elastic portion of the curve is known as the modulus of resilience. The nature of the curve varies from material to material. The following diagrams illustrate the stress strain behaviour of typical materials in terms of the engineering stress and engineering strain where the stress and strain are calculated based on the original dimensions of the sample and not the instantaneous values.
Measures of Yielding The stress at which plastic deformation or yielding is observed to begin depends on the sensitivity of the strain measurements. With most materials there is a gradual transition from elastic to plastic behavior, and the point at which plastic deformation begins is hard to define with precision. Various criteria for the initiation of yielding are used depending on the sensitivity of the strain measurements and the intended use of the data. 1. True elastic limit based on micro strain measurements at strains on order of 2 x 10 -6in | in. This elastic limit is a very low value and is related to the motion of a few hundred dislocations. 2. Proportional limit is the highest stress at which stress is directly proportional to strain. It is obtained by observing the deviation from the straight-line portion of the stress-strain curve. 3. Elastic limit is the greatest stress the material can withstand without any measurable permanent strain remaining on the complete release of load. With increasing sensitivity of strain measurement, the value of the elastic limit is decreased until at the limit it equals the true elastic limit determined from micro strain measurements. With the sensitivity of strain usually employed in engineering studies (10-4in | in), the elastic limit is greater than the proportional limit. Determination of the elastic limit requires a tedious incremental loading-unloading test procedure. 4. The yield strength is the stress required to produce a small-specified amount of plastic deformation. The usual definition of this property is the offset yield strengthdetermined by the stress corresponding to the intersection of the stress-strain curve and a line parallel to the elastic part of the curve offset by a specified strain (Fig. 1). In the United States the offset is usually specified as a strain of 0.2 or 0.1 percent (e = 0.002 or 0.001). (4)
A good way of looking at offset yield strength is that after a specimen has been loaded to its 0.2 percent offset yield strength and then unloaded it will be 0.2 percent longer than before the test. The offset yield strength is often referred to in Great Britain as the proof stress, where offset values are either 0.1 or 0.5 percent. The yield strength obtained by an offset method is commonly used for design and specification purposes because it avoids the practical difficulties of measuring the elastic limit or proportional limit. Some materials have essentially no linear portion to their stress-strain curve, for example, soft copper or gray cast iron. For these materials the offset method cannot be used and the usual practice is to define the yield strength as the stress to produce some total strain, for example, e = 0.005.
Tensile Strength The tensile strength, or ultimate tensile strength (UTS), is the maximum load divided by the original cross-sectional area of the specimen.
The tensile strength is the value most often quoted from the results of a tension test; yet in reality it is a value of little fundamental significance with regard to the strength of a metal. For ductile metals the tensile strength should be regarded as a measure of the maximum load, which a metal can withstand under the very restrictive conditions of uniaxial loading. It will be shown that this value bears little relation to the useful strength of the metal under the more complex conditions of stress, which are usually encountered. For many years it was customary to base the strength of members on the tensile strength, suitably reduced by a factor of safety. The current trend is to the more rational approach of basing the static design of ductile metals on the yield strength. However, because of the long practice of using the tensile strength to determine the strength of materials, it has become a very familiar property, and as such it is a very useful identification of a material in the same sense that the chemical composition serves to identify a metal or alloy. Further, because the tensile strength is easy to determine and is a quite reproducible property