Materials and manufacture 2 - Essay Example

ected to be hard; hardness is a property of a metal, which enables it to resist being permanently deformed, broken, or its shape being changed when a load is applied. Hardness of a mental is in direct relationship to its resistance, the greater the hardness of metal, the great the resistance to deformation (Nisbett, 2005). In order to establish the properties of materials under given conditions, they are normally subjected to various tests. The tensile strength of a material is a measure of how resistant the material is to failure under tension.

The tensile test measures a material’s strength under tension. The testing involves applying a pulling force to a material from both sides until the material changes its shape or breaks. Metals, plastics, wood and ceramics are the common materials whose tensile strengths are measure. The recommended SI unit when testing tensile strength is either Pascal (Pa) or Newton per square meter, some engineers measure tensile strength in kilo-pound per square inch (KSI) (Davis, 2004). The impact strength of a material is the property of a material to resist failure under impulsive forces.

The Charply impact test measures the energy absorbed by a standard notched specimen while breaking under an impact load (Lambert, Miriam and Susan, 2010). The test is being used as an economical quality control method so as to determine the notch sensitivity and impact toughness of engineering materials. The rotary strength of a material is the property of the material to resist failure under torsion. The Rotary fatigue test involves determining the relationship between the stress range and the number of times it can be applied before causing failure.

In the process of determining rotary test of a material, testing machines are used for applying cyclically varying stresses and cover tension, compression, torsion and bending or a combination of these stresses (Mitchell and Jerina, 2007). Yet again, the carbon composition of a material impacts