Mechanical Properties

Properties of Materials
Characteristics Used to Identify a Material
• Chemical Properties – how a material interacts
with other materials

• Physical Properties – characteristics the material

possesses in and of itself

• Mechanical Properties – material’s response to

force or stress

• Thermal Properties – material’s response to heat

 Chemical
Physical
Properties
Properties

Properties of Materials

Thermal Mechanic
Properties
al
Propertie
s
Mechanical Properties

How materials respond

to force or stress
– force – a push or pull

– stress – force causing

a deformation or
distortion (force per
unit area)

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 Stresses and Forces
Tension: the pulling force
stretches materials

Compression: a pushing
force squashes materials

Torsion: a twisting force

Shear: opposing forces

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 Mechanical Properties
• workability
malleability – can be flattened
ductility – can be drawn into
wire (stretched), bent, or
extruded
• brittleness
breaks instead of deforming
when stress is applied
• hardness
resistance to denting or
scratching
 Mechanical Properties
• elasticity
ability to return to original shape
after being deformed by stress
• plasticity
retains new shape after being
deformed by stress
• toughness
– ability to absorb energy
• strength
– resistance to distortion by stress
or force blogs.msdn.com/.../images/610897/original.aspx
• Tensile Test

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&feature=related
 Metal Property Changes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPKkgmDoEoU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jSz11lz8MA

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 At the molecular level…
Crystal Defects and Imperfections

• What does ‘defect’ mean?

Any piece of metal is made up of a large
number of "crystal grains", which are
regions of regularity. At the grain
boundaries atoms have become
misaligned.

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Types of Crystal Defects

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 Crystal Line Dislocation Defects
Atoms get jammed
Work hardening

If you have a pure piece of metal,

you can control the size of the
grains by heat treatment or by
working the metal.
Heating a metal tends to shake
the atoms into a more regular
arrangement - decreasing the
number of grain boundaries, and
so making the metal softer.
Banging the metal around when it
is cold tends to produce lots of
small grains. Cold working
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therefore makes a metal harder. 004.gif
 Crystal Interfacial Defects
Interfacial defects occur
wherever the crystalline
structure of the material is
not continuous across a
plane.

Examples are surfaces, grain

boundaries, and interfaces
between different layers of
materials .

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if
 Copper Wire Bending

• Bend the wire as shown:

• Use a black marker to draw a line along the wire’s
middle section
• Twist the wire as many times as you can – you are
work-hardening the wire. Count the number of turns.
• Holding the wire with pliers, heat the twisted area. Let
it cool) and try twist it again. You have annealed the
wire.
• Note your results.
 Heat-Treating Steel Lab
Work Hardening - to strengthen a material by reshaping it while the part is cold.
Forging - shape or form metal by beating or hammering it
Annealing
- heat to red hot, air cool
- metal is heated and cooled so that crystal can reform.
- softens metal by relieving stress
Quenching/Hardening
- heat to red hot, quench in cool water
- rapid cooling of metal locks atoms into place in an unstable crystal structure
- strengthens metal but brittle
Tempering
- heat to red hot, quench, re-heat to blue, air cool
- heating material so atoms re-orient themselves
- removes brittleness but keeps strength

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 Bobby Pin and Paper Clip

Bobby pins and paper clips are processed in much the same
way but contain different amounts of carbon. Bobby pins and
paper clips are formed from cold worked steel wire. The
paper clip, containing little carbon, is mostly pure Fe with
some Fe3C particles. The bobby pin has more carbon and thus
contains a larger amount of Fe3C which makes it much harder
and stronger.