Title

Tensile Testing of Metals

Objective
 To determine the tensile strength of metal

Introduction
Tensile testing is an important test for getting information about materials and their properties.
Some of the properties are ultimate tensile strength, maximum elongation, yield strength, Young’s
modulus and Poisson’s Ratio. The results can be used when choosing suitable materials for
production and construction.

The test is done by applying an increasing axial force to a standard tensile specimen until failure.
The specimen has two large ‘shoulders’ for gripping and a thinner middle section for deformation
and fracture. The dimensions differ in various standardised tests. During the test the tensile force
and the extension are recorded. The information is used to calculate the stress and strain. First the
sample would undergo elastic deformation until the yield point. After that the plastic deformation
takes place until failure.

Figure 1: Standard Specimen (Weiler, 2013)

Theory
In the test the elongation is measured against the tensile force. This is used to calculate the strain.

∆
𝜀= 𝜀=

The force is used to calculate the engineering stress.

𝐹
𝜎=
𝐴

 ∆L – Elongation
 L0 – Initial gauge length
 F – Tensile force
 A0 – Initial cross section

The following image shows the stress-strain curve and the condition of the specimen at significant
moments.

Figure 2: Stress-Strain curve of ductile material (Shah, 2011)

Apparatus/Instrument
Medium Carbon steel specimen Area Reduction Gauge

Vernier Calliper Elongation Gauge

Tensile testing machine

Computer
Procedure

 First specimen’s gage length and diameter of the cross section were measured using the
Vernier caliper.

 Specimen was placed between the jaws of the tensile testing machine and by rotating a
wheel by manually applied the load to the specimen.

 The display in the tensile machine indicates the load and the elongation of the specimen
with load.

 Display of the tensile testing machine was videoed to read the exact load in the maximum
elongation.

 Load was applied until the specimen was broke into two pieces. o Two parts of the
specimen was placed on the elongation gauge and calculate the elongation.

 A piece of a specimen was placed in the area reduction gauge and measures the reduction
of the cross-section area.
Observation
Calculations

Load Elongation Stress Strain

0 0 0 0

70 0 4.71 0

1400 0.2 94.21 0.009

5500 0.8 370.12 0.038

9860 1.3 663.53 0.063

10440 1.5 702.56 0.073

10500 1.6 706.59 0.078

10100 2.0 679.68 0.097

9670 2.5 650.74 0.122

9120 2.8 613.73 0.136

8210 3.2 552.49 0.156

6900 3.5 464.33 0.170

6600 3.7 444.14 0.182

Under an applied load, change in the shape/structure of the material called deformation. Elastic
deformation involves stretching the bonds, but it does not involve in slipping the atoms and pass
Conclusion
As any engineer we should have the knowledge about how the materials act in various situations.
In this lab practical it gives us good experience and idea about the properties of the materials. We
learned about why different materials has different properties and how those properties comes to
those materials by analyzing the atomic and molecular structures and mainly the stress vs. strain
graph.

References

 En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Tensile testing. [online] Available at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_testing [Accessed 26 Aug. 2018].

 Practicalmaintenance.net. (2018). Practical Maintenance » Blog Archive » Plastic Deformation

and Fracture. [online] Available at: http://practicalmaintenance.net/?p=1135 [Accessed 26 Aug.
2018].

 Jove.com. (2018). Stress-Strain Characteristics of Aluminum | Protocol. [online] Available at:

https://www.jove.com/science-education/10362/stress-strain-characteristics-of-aluminum
[Accessed 26 Aug. 2018].

 En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Ultimate tensile strength. [online] Available at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_tensile_strength [Accessed 26 Aug. 2018].