You are on page 1of 7

Ultimate tensile strength

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Tensile strength) Jump to: navigation, search Ultimate tensile strength (UTS), often shortened to tensile strength (TS) or ultimate strength,[1][2] is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled before failing or breaking. Tensile strength is not the same as compressive strength and the values can be quite different. Some materials will break sharply, without plastic deformation, in what is called a brittle failure. Others, which are more ductile, including most metals, will experience some plastic deformation and possibly necking before fracture. The UTS is usually found by performing a tensile test and recording the engineering stress versus strain. The highest point of the stress-strain curve (see point 1 on the engineering stress/strain diagrams below) is the UTS. It is an intensive property; therefore its value does not depend on the size of the test specimen. However, it is dependent on other factors, such as the preparation of the specimen, the presence or otherwise of surface defects, and the temperature of the test environment and material. Tensile strengths are rarely used in the design of ductile members, but they are important in brittle members. They are tabulated for common materials such as alloys, composite materials, ceramics, plastics, and wood. Tensile strength is defined as a stress, which is measured as force per unit area. For some nonhomogeneous materials (or for assembled components) it can be reported just as a force or as a force per unit width. In the SI system, the unit is the pascal (Pa) (or a multiple thereof, often megapascals (MPa), using the mega- prefix); or, equivalently to pascals, newtons per square metre (N/m). A customary unit is pounds-force per square inch (lbf/in or psi), or kilo-pounds per square inch (ksi, or sometimes kpsi), which is equal to 1000 psi; kilo-pounds per square inch are commonly used for convenience when measuring tensile strengths.

Contents
[hide]

1 Concept o 1.1 Ductile materials 2 Testing 3 Typical tensile strengths 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading

Concept[edit]
Ductile materials[edit]

"Engineering" stress vs. strain curve typical of aluminum 1. Ultimate strength 2. Yield strength 3. Proportional limit stress 4. Fracture 5. Offset strain (typically 0.2%)

"Engineering" (red) and "true" (blue) stress vs. strain curve typical of structural steel 1. Ultimate strength 2. Yield strength 3. Fracture 4. Strain hardening region 5. Necking region A: Engineering stress B: True stress

Many materials display linear elastic behavior, defined by a linear stress-strain relationship, as shown in the figure up to point 3. The elastic behavior of materials often extends into a nonlinear region, represented in the figure by point 2, up to which deformations are completely recoverable upon removal of the load; that is, a specimen loaded elastically in tension will elongate, but will return to its original shape and size when unloaded. Beyond this linear region, for ductile materials, such as steel, deformations are plastic. A plastically deformed specimen will not return to its original size and shape when unloaded. Note that there will be elastic recovery of a portion of the deformation. For many applications, plastic deformation is unacceptable, and is used as the design limitation. After the yield point, ductile metals will undergo a period of strain hardening, in which the stress increases again with increasing strain, and they begin to neck, as the cross-sectional area of the specimen decreases due to plastic flow. In a sufficiently ductile material, when necking becomes substantial, it causes a reversal of the engineering stress-strain curve (curve A); this is because the engineering stress is calculated assuming the original cross-sectional area before necking. The reversal point is the maximum stress on the engineering stress-strain curve, and the engineering stress coordinate of this point is the tensile ultimate strength, given by point 1. The UTS is not used in the design of ductile static members because design practices dictate the use of the yield stress. It is, however, used for quality control, because of the ease of testing. It is also used to roughly determine material types for unknown samples.[3] The UTS is a common engineering parameter when designing brittle members, because there is no yield point.[3]

Testing[edit]

Round bar tensile specimen after testing Main article: Tensile testing

Typically, the testing involves taking a small sample with a fixed cross-section area, and then pulling it with a tensometer, gradually increasing force until the sample breaks. When testing metals, indentation hardness correlates linearly with tensile strength. This important relation permits economically important nondestructive testing of bulk metal deliveries with lightweight, even portable equipment, such as hand-held Rockwell hardness testers.[4] It should be noted that while most metal forms, like sheet, bar, tube and wire can exhibit the test UTS, fibers, such as carbon fibers, being only 2/10,000th of an inch in diameter, must be made into composites to create useful real-world forms. As the datasheet on T1000G below indicates, while the UTS of the fiber is very high at 6,370MPa, the UTS of a derived composite is 3,040MPa - less than half the strength of the fiber.[5]

Typical tensile strengths[edit]


Typical tensile strengths of some materials Material Steel, structural ASTM A36 steel Steel, 1090 mild Human skin Steel, Micro-Melt 10 Tough Treated Tool (AISI A11)[6] Steel, 2800 Maraging steel[7] Steel, AerMet 340[8] Steel, Sandvik Sanicro 36Mo logging cable Precision Wire[9] Steel, AISI 4130, water quenched 855C (1570F), 480C (900F) temper[10] Titanium 11 (Ti-6Al-2Sn-1.5Zr-1Mo0.35Bi-0.1Si), Aged[11] Steel, API 5L X65[12] Steel, high strength alloy ASTM A514 Clear Acrylic cast sheet (PMMA)[13] High-density polyethylene (HDPE) Polypropylene Steel, stainless AISI 302 - Cold-rolled Cast iron 4.5% C, ASTM A-48 "Liquidmetal" alloy[citation needed] Beryllium[15] 99.9% Be 0250 0248 0015 5171 2617 2160 1758 0951 0940 0448 0690 72 0026-0033 0012-0043 0520[citation needed] 0130 1723 0345 Yield strength (MPa) Ultimate strength (MPa) 0400-0550 0841 0020 5205 2693 2430 2070 1110 1040 0531 0760 114[14] 0037 0019.7-80 0860 0200 0550-1600 0448 Density (g/cm) 7.8 7.58 2.2 7.45 8.00 7.86 8.00 7.85 4.50 7.8 7.8 1.16 0.95 0.91 8.19 6.1 01.84

Typical tensile strengths of some materials Material Aluminium alloy[16] 2014-T6 Polyester resin (unreinforced)[17] Polyester and Chopped Strand Mat Laminate 30% E-glass[17] S-Glass Epoxy composite[18] Aluminium alloy 6061-T6 Copper 99.9% Cu Cupronickel 10% Ni, 1.6% Fe, 1% Mn, balance Cu Brass Tungsten Glass E-Glass S-Glass Basalt fiber[20] Marble Concrete Carbon fiber 0414 0055 0100 2358 0241 0070 0130 0200 + 0941 0300 0220 0350 0550 1510 0033[19] 1500 for laminates, 3450 for fibers alone 4710 4840 0015 0003 1600 for Laminate, 4137 for fiber alone 6370 fibre alone 0380 0350-0500 1000 2.7 8.92 8.94 19.25 2.53 2.57 2.48 2.7 2.7 1.75 Yield strength (MPa) Ultimate strength (MPa) 0483 Density (g/cm) 2.8

N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Carbon fiber (Toray T1000G)[21] Human hair Bamboo Spider silk (See note below) Spider silk, Darwin's bark spider[22] Silkworm silk Aramid (Kevlar or Twaron) UHMWPE[23] UHMWPE fibers[24][25] (Dyneema or Spectra) Vectran

1.80 0.4 1.3 1.3 1.44 0.97 0.97

1652 0500 3620 00.24

3757 0052 2300-3500 2850-3340

Typical tensile strengths of some materials Material Polybenzoxazole (Zylon)[26] Wood, Pine (parallel to grain) Bone (limb) Nylon, type 6/6 Epoxy adhesive Rubber Boron Silicon, monocrystalline (m-Si) Silicon carbide (SiC) Ultra-pure silica glass fiber-optic strands[28] Sapphire (Al2O3) Boron nitride nanotube Diamond Graphene First carbon nanotube ropes Colossal carbon tube Yield strength (MPa) Ultimate strength (MPa) 2700 0040 0130 0075 0012 - 30[27] 0016 3100 7000 3440 4100 1900 33000 2800 130000[29] 3600 7000 Density (g/cm) 1.56 1.6 1.15 2.46 2.33

0104-121 0045 N/A N/A N/A 400 at 25C, 275 at 500C, 345 at 1000C N/A 1600 N/A ? N/A

3.9-4.1

? 3.5 1.0 1.3 0.116 0.037Carbon nanotube (see note below) N/A 11000-63000 1.34 [30] Carbon nanotube composites N/A 1200 N/A Iron (pure mono-crystal) 0003 0007.874 ^a Many of the values depend on manufacturing process and purity/composition. ^b Multiwalled carbon nanotubes have the highest tensile strength of any material yet measured, with labs producing them at a tensile strength of 63 GPa,[31] still well below their theoretical limit of 300 GPa.[citation needed] The first nanotube ropes (20mm in length) whose tensile strength was published (in 2000) had a strength of 3.6 GPa.[32] The density depends on the manufacturing method, and the lowest value is 0.037 or 0.55 (solid).[33] ^c The strength of spider silk is highly variable. It depends on many factors including kind of silk (Every spider can produce several for sundry purposes.), species, age of silk, temperature, humidity, swiftness at which stress is applied during testing, length stress is applied, and way the silk is gathered (forced silking or natural spinning).[34] The value shown in the table, 1000 MPa, is roughly representative of the results from a few studies involving several different species of spider however specific results varied greatly.[35] ^d Human hair strength varies by ethnicity and chemical treatments. Typical properties for annealed elements[36]

Young's Offset or Ultimate modulus yield strength strength (GPa) (MPa) (MPa) silicon 0107 50009000 tungsten 0411 0550 05500620 iron 0211 00800100 0350 titanium 0120 01000225 02460370 copper 0130 0117 0210 tantalum 0186 0180 0200 tin 0047 00090014 00150200 zinc (wrought) 0105 01100200 nickel 170 01400350 01400195 silver 0083 0170 gold 0079 0100 aluminium 0070 00150020 0040-0050 lead 0016 0012 Element

See also[edit]

Flexural strength Strength of materials Tensile structure Toughness Failure Tension

You might also like