COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL & ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING

CVEN 214: STRENGTH OF MATERIALS

Chapter 3: MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF MATERIAL
WAEL I. ALNAHHAL, Ph. D., P. Eng
Spring, 2015

The Tension and Compression Test

The strength of a material depends on its ability to

sustain a load without excessive deformation or failure.

Material strength is determined under the tension or
compression experiments.
Some machine are designed to read the load and strain
for a given a specimen.
Tension or compression experiments can be used to
determine nominal stress-normal strain relationships
for engineering materials such as metals, ceramics,
polymers and composites materials such as reinforced
concrete

The Tension and Compression Test

Test Specimen

Tension/Compression Testing Machines

The StressStrain Diagram

StressStrain Diagram
Nominal or engineering stress is obtained by
dividing the applied load P by the specimens original
cross-sectional area.
=

P
A0

Nominal or engineering strain is obtained by

dividing the change in the specimens gauge length

by the specimens original gauge length.
L L0
=
=
L0
L0

The StressStrain Diagram

Elastic Behaviour
Stress is directly proportional to the strain.
Material is said to be linearly elastic.
Elasticity is the ability of a material to return to its previous shape

after stress is released

Yielding
Increase in stress above

elastic limit will cause material to

deform permanently.
Plasticity or plastic deformation is

the opposite of elastic deformation and

is accepted as unrecoverable strain

Most engineering design is done within the elastic range

The StressStrain Diagram

Strain Hardening.
After yielding a further load will
reaches an ultimate stress or strength.
The ultimate strength is the maximum stress that a material can withstand
before material breaks or weakens

Necking
At ultimate stress, cross-sectional

area begins to decrease in a

localized region of the specimen.
Specimen breaks at the

fracture stress.

Necking

StressStrain Behavior of Ductile and Brittle Materials

Ductile Materials
Material that can be subjected to

large strains before it ruptures is

called a ductile material
Exhibit high plasticity
e.g plastic, copper

Brittle Materials
Materials that exhibit low strain,

little or no yielding before failure

are referred to as brittle materials
Brittle material do not or exhibit
low plasticity
e.g ceramics, wood.

Stress-Strain Diagram for Steel

Stress () strain () diagrams

Nominal stress and strain (in the
calculations we use the initial crosssectional area A)
True stress (in the calculations we use the
cross-sectional area A when failure occurs)
True strain if we use a strain gauge
Stress-strain diagrams contain important
information about mechanical properties
and behaviour

Stress-strain diagram for a typical structural

steel in tension (not to scale)

Stress () strain () diagrams-Mild Steel

Compressive Strength of
Concrete
The specified compressive strength of concrete
'
f
is denoted by the symbol c
Compressive strength is determined by testing
a 6x12 in(150x300 mm) cylinder at an age of
28 days
For most applications, the range of concrete
strength is 3,000 to 4,000 psi (21 to 28
MPa)
12

Compression Test Setup for f"c

Concrete Stress- Strain

14

Concrete Stress- Strain

The relationship between stress and strain is
roughly linear at stress levels equal to
about one-third to one-half the ultimate
strength.
Beyond this
range the
relationship
is non-linear

15

Concrete Stress- Strain

Regardless of compressive strength, all
concretes
reach
their
maximum
strength
at a strain
of about
0.002
16

Concrete Stress- Strain

Concrete does not have a well-define yield
point.

17

Concrete Stress- Strain

Ultimate strain achieved is on the order of
0.003 to 0.004. Lower strength concrete
achieves
higher
ultimate
strains than
does higher
strength
concrete
18

Plasticity
Plasticity is the characteristic of a material which undergoes inelastic strains beyond the
strain at the elastic limit

When large deformations occur in a ductile material loaded in the plastic region, the
material is undergoing plastic flow

Reloading of a material
If the material is in the elastic range, it can be
loaded, unloaded and loaded again without
significantly changing the behaviour
When loaded in the plastic range, the internal
structure of the material is altered and the
properties change
If the material is reloaded (fig 1-19), CB is a linearly
elastic region with the same slope as the slope of the
tangent to the original loading curve at origin O
By stretching steel or aluminium into the plastic
range, the properties of the material are changed

1.Modulus of Elasticity: Hookes Law

The stress-strain diagrams for most engineering

materials exhibits a linear relationship between stress

and strain within the elastic region

Most engineering design is based on the elastic range

Modulus of Elasticity: Hookes Law:

Hookes Law defines the linear relationship

between stress and strain within the elastic
region.

E=

= stress
E = modulus of elasticity or Youngs modulus (N/m2)
= strain

E can be used only if a material has linearelastic behaviour.

Offset method
When the yield point is not obvious,
like in the previous case, and undergoes
large strains, an arbitrary yield stress
can be determined by the offset method
The intersection of the offset line and
the stress-strain curve (point A) defines
the yield stress

2. Modulus of Resilience: Strain Energy

When material is deformed by external loading, it will store energy

internally throughout its volume.

Energy is related to the strains called strain energy.
Modulus of Resilience
When stress reaches the proportional limit, the strain-energy density
is the modulus of resilience, ur.

1
1 pl
, Nm 2
=
pl pl
2
2 E
2

ur

3. Modulus of Toughness: Strain Energy

Toughness is also defined as the resistance to
fracture of a material when stressed
Modulus of toughness, ut, represents the entire

area under the stressstrain diagram.

It indicates the strain-energy density of the material
just before it fractures.

StressStrain Behavior of Ductile and Brittle Materials

EXAMPLE 3.1

EXAMPLE 3.1
(CONTINUED)

4. Poissons Ratio
Poissons ratio, v, states that in the elastic range, the

ratio of its two strains is a constant since the

deformations are proportional.

v=

lateral

longidudinal

Poissons ratio is dimensionless.

Typical values are 1/3 or 1/4.

Negative sign since longitudinal elongation (positive

strain) causes lateral contraction (negative strain), and

vice versa.

Limitations
Poissons ratio is constant in the linearly elastic
range
Material must be homogeneous (same
composition at every point)
Materials having the same properties in all
directions are called isotropic
If the properties differ in various directions the
materials called anisotropic

SHEAR STRESS-STRAIN DIAGRAM

Strength parameter G Shear modulus of elasticity or the
modules of rigidity
G is related to the modulus of elasticity E and Poissons ratio
v.

= G
E
G=
2(1 + v )

EXAMPLE 3.4

EXAMPLE 3.4
(CONTINUED)

EXAMPLE 3.5

EXAMPLE 3.5
(CONTINUED)

EXAMPLE 3.6

EXAMPLE 3.6
(CONTINUED)

*Failure of Materials Due to Creep and Fatigue

Creep
When material support a load for long period of time,
it will deform until a sudden fracture occurs.
This time-dependent permanent deformation is
known as creep.
Both stress and/or temperature play a significant role
in the rate of creep.
Creep strength will decrease
for higher temperatures or
higher applied stresses.

*Failure of Materials Due to Creep and Fatigue

Fatigue
When metal subjected to repeated cycles of stress
or strain, it will ultimately leads to fracture.
This behaviour is called fatigue.
Endurance or fatigue limit is a limit which no failure
can be detected after applying a load for a specified
number of cycles.
This limit can be
determined in S-N diagram.