Mechanical testing


Mechanical testing covers a wide range of tests, which can be divided broadly into two types:
  1. those that aim to determine a material's mechanical properties, independent of geometry.
  2. those that determine the response of a structure to a given action, e.g. testing of composite beams, aircraft structures to destruction, etc.

    Mechanical testing of materials

There exists a large number of tests, many of which are standardized, to determine the various mechanical properties of materials. In general, such tests set out to obtain geometry-independent properties; i.e. those intrinsic to the bulk material. In practice this is not always feasible, since even in tensile tests, certain properties can be influenced by specimen size and/or geometry. Here is a listing of some of the most common tests: