UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

MATERIALS FOR ENGINEERING (ES195)

LAB SHEET
TENSILE PROPERTIES OF ENGINEERING MATERIALS

Bring to the laboratory:

Lab notebook, pen, calculator, ruler
Data book
Personal protective equipment (safety shoes/boots, lab coat, safety glasses)
This handout
Before the laboratory:
Read the lab sheet
Look at the information on the module webpages, including H&S sheets

SAFETY AWARENESS

Your demonstrator will brief you about Health and Safety awareness. Before beginning the
experiment, you should make your own assessment of what might happen during the
experiment that could cause a safety issue, and what you can do to control the risk. You
should note this in your log book in a table, with the suggested headings below.

Table: Safety awareness table

Hazard Countermeasure

N.B. During your assessment you should have concluded that:

Wearing safety shoes will reduce the risk of hurting your feet by falling objects
Wearing safety glasses will reduce the risk of damage to your eyes by specimen
jumping out, and/or chipping
Wearing a lab coat is a good practice, and will keep you and apparatus clean, and
reduce the risk of loose objects getting caught in your clothes and apparatus
In summary you must wear

You must wear safety shoes in the lab during the experiment
You must wear safety glasses in the lab during the experiment
You should wear your lab coat in the lab during the experiment

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1. Objective of the tensile experiment
Use tensile apparatus (see Fig. 1) to assess tensile mechanical properties (Youngs
modulus, tensile strength and strain to failure) of different engineering metallic materials
(steel, aluminium, brass, copper) from their stress-strain curves.

2. Apparatus and tensile specimens

The tensile tester consists of gripping heads (see 3 in Fig. 1), which are inserted into
crosshead (4) and top crossbar (1). The test load is generated by hydraulic means a hand-
wheel (8) operates a piston in the master cylinder, which generates a hydrostatic pressure that
creates the test load (in kN). The force is recorded with the force gauge (9). Elongation is
measured via a dial gauge (2).

Round tensile specimens with threaded heads, and an initial measurement length of L0=30
mm, and a diameter of d=6 mm are used in the experiment. Two reference marks are
applied to the specimen to measure the lengths.

Fig. 1: WP300 universal material tester and tensile specimen (images by GUNT)

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3. Fundamentals
The tensile test is a standard experiment in materials testing. It is used to determine tensile
strength (Rm) and the strain at fracture (F). Additionally, it can be used to determine
Youngs modulus (E), proportionality limit (Rp), and the yield point (Re). All those
quantities can be obtained from the stress-strain diagram, as shown in Fig. 2.

In particular, below the proportionality limit (Rp) (units of Pascal [Pa]), the material follows
Hookes law, where the strain is proportional to the stress, and thus forms Hookes line the
slope of the line defines the Youngs modulus E of the material (units of Pascal [Pa]), which
is a measure of material stiffness.

Beyond the proportionality limit the material starts undergoing plastic deformation, which
leads to the yield point (Re) (units of Pascal [Pa]). From this point the material is
permanently deformed - this means that if the load is removed at this point (or beyond the
yield point) a certain deformation (strain) remains in the material. This is of course can
endanger a safe performance of an engineering component or structure.

The maximum stress on the stress-strain curve corresponds to the tensile strength (Rm)
(units of Pascal [Pa]), which is one of the most important characteristics of a material. The
strain at the point of specimen rupture is called the fracture strain (F) (dimensionless units).

Fig. 2: Typical stress () versus strain () curve with its salient quantities for steel (soft-
annealed)
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The stress-strain diagram is created from the values of force (units: Newton [N]) and
elongation (units: millimetres [mm]) recorded during the tensile test.

Particularly, stress is defined as the force applied to the sample divided by the specimen
circular cross-section A0:

F A0 [MPa]=[N] [mm2 ] , where A0 d 2 4 (1)

Thus, the initial cross-sectional area of the tensile specimen here is A0 = 28.27 mm2.

Please note that in your experiment the stresses are derived based on the constant cross-
section of the specimen A0 i.e. it is assumed that the cross-sectional area of the specimen
does not change during the tensile experiment. However, in reality the specimen undergoes
some contraction (perpendicular to the direction of extension), which leads to changes in the
cross-sectional area during the test. Thus, in this laboratory you will obtain a technical
profile of your stress-strain curve, in contrast to the real (or true) profile (for the changing
cross-sectional area), as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3: Technical and real (true) stress-strain curve (soft-annealed steel)

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Then, strain is defined as a ratio of the sample elongation L to the initial measurement
length of the sample L0 (here 30 mm)

L L0 100% [%], where L L L0 (2)

The fracture strain F relates the change in the specimens length at its rupture (LF) to its
initial length (L0), and it is calculated as follows:

F LF L0 100% [%], where LF LF L0 (3)

where LF is measured as the distance between reference points after rupture (see Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Initial specimen length L0 and specimen length at rupture LF

Fig. 5: Stress-strain diagram for various materials

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Fig. 5 shows stress-strain diagrams for various materials: hardened steel (1), tempered steel
(2), soft-annealed steel (3), and an aluminium alloy (4). The hardened steel (1) fractures
with practically no plastic deformation, but has a very high tensile strength. The tempered
steel (2) is much tougher, but still has a high strength. The soft-annealed steel (3) has a very
high strain to fracture, but low tensile strength. Here, there is a pronounced yield point in the
transition to the plastic behaviour. In the case of aluminium alloy (4) the low modulus of
elasticity causes the stress-strain curve to increase less steeply in the elastic area (i.e. in the
proportionality regime) than in the case of steel materials.

4. Experimental procedure
I. Specimen mounting

Screw the tensile specimen into the bottom gripping head by hand (Fig. 6a), as far as
it will go
Screw the tensile specimen into the top gripping head by hand (Fig. 6b) , as far as it
will go
Attach nut to the top gripping head and tighten by hand until the gripping head is
seated in the top cross-bar without any looseness (Fig. 6c)
Set trailing pointer on the force gauge to zero
Adjust the dial gauge so it is touching the flexible top on the top cross-bar
Pretension slightly using the hand-wheel

(a) (c)
(b)

Fig. 6: Steps in specimen mounting

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II. Specimen loading

Subject the specimen to the load slowly and steadily by turning the hand-wheel in specified
increments of elongation L :

increments of L =0.1 mm until the total elongation reaches 1 mm

increments of L =0.2 mm for the total elongation between 1 mm and 7 mm
increments of L =0.5 mm for the total elongation above 7 mm
For each increment of elongation L record the corresponding force value from the
force gauge, and write it down in the Table A1 included in the Appendix A of this
handout
Note that the force measurements should be taken from the leading pointer (black)
of the force gauge. Also, note that when the material passes its yield peak, the
leading pointer on the force gauge may go back (i.e. force decreases in comparison
to the previous reading) in that case wait until the leading pointer stabilises and
take your reading.
Observe specimen necking during the test
Once the specimen ruptures record the maximum test load from the trailing (red)
pointer

III. Specimen removal

Remove the fractured tensile specimen from the gripping heads

Measure the distance between the two reference marks on the fractured specimen, by
combining the two ends of the fractured specimen.
Turn the hand-wheel fully closed, so to release the pressure from the hydraulic
cylinder

For each additional specimen, repeat the steps (I)-(II)

Important remarks:

During specimen loading avoid any abrupt application of the load

Do not exceed the maximum force of 20kN, which can cause damage to the
equipment

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 Note that when the specimen ruptures, it will occur as slow tearing or abruptly in
the latter case it does so with a loud crack sound, especially in the case of steel
specimens

5. Analysis

Use the recorded force and elongation values to derive the stress-strain curve using
the formulas (1) and (2) from Section 3 use provided sheets with tables for this

Comment on the shape of your stress-strain curves, in reference to Fig. B1 in the

Appendix B

From the derived stress-strain curve, determine (where possible) its main
characteristics as follows: proportionality limit, yield point, tensile strength, and
fracture strain

Approximate the modulus of elasticity (Youngs modulus) by dividing the maximum

stress within the proportionality region by the corresponding strain.

Compare your data with the corresponding material from the Table B1 in the
Appendix B

Comment on any errors in your experimental data for this consider (1) how you
measured the samples, (2) the type of samples (including samples microstructure), (3)
the geometry of samples, (3) environmental conditions etc.

6. References

Experiment instructions, WP300 Universal tester, GUNT, Hamburg (www.gunt.de)

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Appendix A: Table A1 to record your force measurements

Group/Name: .. Date: ..

Series of measurements from tensile tests with different materials

Specimen Specimen 1 Specimen 2
Elongation [mm] Force [kN] Force [kN]
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1.0
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
2.0
2.2
2.4
2.6
2.8
3.0
3.2
3.4
3.6
3.8
4.0
4.2
4.4
4.6
4.8

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5.0
5.2
5.4
5.6
5.8
6.0
6.2
6.4
6.6
6.8
7.0
7.5
8.0
8.5
9.0
9.5
10.0
10.5
11.0
11.5
12.0
12.5
13.0
13.5
14.0
14.5
15.0
15.5
16.0
16.5
17.0
17.5
18.0

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Appendix B: Reference data

Fig. B1: Reference stress-strain curves for steel, aluminium, brass and copper

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 Table B1: Reference material properties for steel, aluminium, brass and copper

Remarks:

Strain A5 above is the fracture strain F (see Equation (3))

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