Discipline of materials science and engineering:

Processing  Structure  Properties  Performance

Materials science studies the relations between structure and properties whereas engineering takes
those relations as a package.

Levels of structure:

- Sub-atomic
- Atomic
- Nano
- Micro
- Macro

Materials properties:

- Mechanical (stiffness, ductility, strength, toughness, resilience, hardness …)

- Electrical (electrical conductivity, dielectric constant …)
- Magnetic (magnetization …)
- Optical (describe response to electromagnetic stimulus: reflectivity and refraction indexes…)
- Deteriorative (describe chemical reactivity: resistance to corrosion …)

As mechanical engineers, we’re only interested in mechanical properties. A little attention might be
allocated to deteriorative characteristics as corrosion allowances are predicated thereon.

Mechanical properties of materials: failure modes

These properties relate deformations to forces and loads (mechanical stimulus). Knowing the
characteristics of the material is indispensable to predict its behaviour in service and design
components that are sufficiently resistant to withstand service loads without failure.
Interpretation

- True strain is slightly inferior to engineering strain

- When the material reaches its ultimate tensile strength and necking starts taking place, it
appears as per the engineering stress- strain curve that the material’s strength is degrading
when in fact it’s increasing, the apparent decrease is due to calculating the stress according
to the formula s=F/A0: since the test apparatus measures the force F (load cell) and divides
the measured value by A0, the rapid decrease in the cross-section area when necking occurs
is not taken into consideration.

Definitions

Stiffness

It describes resistance to elastic deformation. Stiffness is quantified by Young’s Modulus E, which is

the slope of the linear portion of the stress-strain curve: s=E*e (Hooke’s law)

When the elastic region is not linear, which is the case for grey cast iron, concrete and many
polymers, we normally use either tangent or secant modulus (defined at a given value of stress).

Strength

It’s the material’s ability to endure applied loads without deforming plastically (yield strength) or
failure (ultimate strength).