Ductility is the capacity of a material to deform permanently in response to stress. Most common steels, for example, are quite ductile and hence can accommodate local stress concentrations. Brittle materials, such as glass, cannot accommodate concentrations of stress because they lack ductility; they, therefore, fracture rather easily.

When a material specimen is stressed, it deforms elastically (i.e., recoverably) at first; thereafter, deformation becomes permanent. A cylinder of steel, for example, may “neck” (assume an hourglass shape) in response to stress. If the material is ductile, this local deformation is permanent, and the test piece does not assume its former shape if the stress is removed. With sufficiently high stress, fracture occurs.

Ductility can be expressed as strain, reduction in area, or toughness. Strain, or change in length per unit length, was explained earlier. Reduction in area (change in area per unit area) may be measured, for example, in the test section of a steel bar that necks when stressed. Toughness measures the amount of energy required to deform a piece of material permanently. Toughness is a desirable material property in that it permits a component to deform plastically, rather than crack and perhaps fracture.

Hardness testing

Based on the idea that a material’s response to a load placed at one small point is related to its ability to deform permanently (yield), the hardness test is performed by pressing a hardened steel ball (Brinell test) or a steel or diamond cone (Rockwell test) into the surface of the test piece. Most hardness tests are performed on commercial machines that register arbitrary values in inverse relation to the depth of penetration of the ball or cone. Similar indentation tests are performed on wood. Hardness tests of materials such as rubber or plastic do not have the same connotation as those performed on metals. Penetration is measured, of course, but deformation caused by testing such materials may be entirely temporary.

Some hardness tests, particularly those designed to provide a measure of wear or abrasion, are performed dynamically with a weight of given magnitude that falls from a prescribed height. Sometimes a hammer is used, falling vertically on the test piece or in a pendulum motion.

Impact test

Many materials, sensitive to the presence of flaws, cracks, and notches, fail suddenly under impact. The most common impact tests (Charpy and Izod) employ a swinging pendulum to strike a notched bar; heights before and after impact are used to compute the energy required to fracture the bar and, consequently, the bar’s impact strength. In the Charpy test, the test piece is held horizontally between two vertical bars, much like the lintel over a door. In the Izod test, the specimen stands erect, like a fence post. Shape and size of the specimen, mode of support, notch shape and geometry, and velocities at impact are all varied to produce specific test conditions. Nonmetals such as wood may be tested as supported beams, similar to the Charpy test. In nonmetal tests, however, the striking hammer falls vertically in a guide column, and the test is repeated from increasing heights until failure occurs.

Some materials vary in impact strength at different temperatures, becoming very brittle when cold. Tests have shown that the decrease in material strength and elasticity is often quite abrupt at a certain temperature, which is called the transition temperature for that material. Designers always specify a material that possesses a transition temperature well below the range of heat and cold to which the structure or machine is exposed. Thus, even a building in the tropics, which will doubtless never be exposed to freezing weather, employs materials with transition temperatures slightly below freezing.

Fracture toughness tests

The stringent materials-reliability requirements of the space programs undertaken since the early 1960s brought about substantial changes in design philosophy. Designers asked materials engineers to devise quantitative tests capable of measuring the propensity of a material to propagate a crack. Conventional methods of stress analysis and materials-property tests were retained, but interpretation of results changed. The criterion for failure became sudden propagation of a crack rather than fracture. Tests have shown that cracks occur by opening, when two pieces of material part in vertical plane, one piece going up, the other down; by edge sliding, where the material splits in horizontal plane, one piece moving left, the other right; and by tearing, where the material splits with one piece moving diagonally upward to the left, the other moving diagonally downward to the right.

Creep test

Creep is the slow change in the dimensions of a material due to prolonged stress; most common metals exhibit creep behaviour. In the creep test, loads below those necessary to cause instantaneous fracture are applied to the material, and the deformation over a period of time (creep strain) under constant load is measured, usually with an extensometer or strain gauge. In the same test, time to failure is also measured against level of stress; the resulting curve is called stress rupture or creep rupture. Once creep strain versus time is plotted, a variety of mathematical techniques is available for extrapolating creep behaviour of materials beyond the test times so that designers can utilize thousand-hour test data, for example, to predict ten-thousand-hour behaviour.

A material that yields continually under stress and then returns to its original shape when the stress is released is said to be viscoelastic; this type of response is measured by the stress-relaxation test. A prescribed displacement or strain is induced in the specimen and the load drop-off as a function of time is measured. Various viscoelastic theories are available that permit the translation of stress-relaxation test data into predictions about the creep behaviour of the material.