Tensile strength

Tensile strength is a measurement of the force required to pull something such as rope, wire, or a structural beam to the point where it breaks.

The tensile strength of a material is the maximum amount of tensile stress that it can take before failure, for example breaking.

There are three typical definitions of tensile strength:

• Yield strength - The stress a material can withstand without permanent deformation. This is not a sharply defined point. Yield strength is the stress which will cause a permanent deformation of 0.2% of the original dimension.

• Ultimate strength - The maximum stress a material can withstand.

• Breaking strength - The stress coordinate on the stress-strain curve at the point of rupture

What Is Yield Stress?

Stress and strain are directly related to each other: as one increases, the other increases as well. So, the more stress that an object experiences, the more it deforms until the object fails.

All objects will begin experiencing elastic deformation at first, but once the stress on the object exceeds a certain amount, it will experience plastic deformation. When that switch happens, the object has reached its yield stress.

Typically, every material has the same stress-strain relationship, though the size of each portion may be different. Elastic deformation is linear. The slope of the line is dependent on the material the object is made out of. Plastic deformation is not linear, making it more difficult to model.