METALS

Mechanical Properties Part 1

A. Terminology for Mechanical Properties
B. Tensile Test
C. Hardness of Materials
Mechanical Properties Part 2
A. Fracture Mechanics
B. Fatigue

Metals Processing
A. Metal Forming Operations
B. Casting Processes
Casting Defects
C. Miscellaneous
D. Annealing
 Mechanical Properties Part 1
Mechanical Properties are characteristics that indicate the elastic or
inelastic behavior of a material under pressure (force), such as bending,
brittleness, elongation, hardness, and tensile strength. These are the
characteristics revealed when the material is subjected to mechanical loading,
and they play a major role during the process of selecting a material for
engineering applications which depend upon the components being
manufactured and their utilization.
A. Terminology for Mechanical Properties
1. Stress
a. Tensile
b. Compressive
c. Shear

2. Strain
b. Elastic Strain
c. Plastic Strain
3. Viscous material
4. Viscoelastic (or anelastic) material
5. Recovery of strain and Stress relaxation
B. Tensile Test
The tensile test measures the resistance of a material to a static
or slowly applied force. Typically, a tensile test is conducted on metals,
alloys, and plastics. Tensile tests can be used for ceramics; however,
these are not very popular because the sample may fracture while it is
being aligned.
C. Hardness of Materials
The hardness test measures the resistance to
penetration of the surface of a material by a hard object. Hardness
as a term is not defined precisely. Hardness, depending upon the
context, can represent resistance to scratching or indentation and
a qualitative measure of the strength of the material. In general, in
macrohardness measurements, the load applied is 2 N. A variety
of hardness tests have been devised, but the most commonly
used are the :
a. Brinell hardness test
b. Rockwell hardness test
 Mechanical Properties Part 2

A. Fracture Mechanics
Fracture mechanics is the discipline concerned with the
behavior of materials containing cracks or other small flaws. What
we wish to know is the maximum stress that a material can
withstand if it contains flaws of a certain size and geometry.
Fracture toughness measures the ability of a material containing
a flaw to withstand an applied load.

The fracture mechanics approach allows us to design and

select materials while taking into account the inevitable presence
of flaws. What is the importance of Fracture Mechanics in:
a. Selection of a Material?
b. Design of a Component?
c. Design of a Manufacturing or Testing Method?
B. Fatigue
Fatigue is the lowering of strength or failure of a material
due to repetitive stress which may be above or below the yield
strength while fatigue failure is the failure of a material due to
repeated loading and unloading. Fatigue failures typically occur in
three stages:
1. Tiny crack
2. Crack propagation
3. Fracture

The fatigue test can tell us how long a part may survive
or the maximum allowable loads that can be applied without
causing failure. Fatigue life tells us how long a component
survives at a particular stress. Fatigue strength is the maximum
stress for which fatigue will not occur within a particular number of
cycles. The ratio between the endurance limit and the tensile
strength is known as the endurance ratio:
 Metals
Processing
A. Metal Forming Techniques
Forming operations (forging, rolling, drawing, extrusion) are where
the shape of a metal is changed by plastic deformation.

Forming processes are commonly classified into:

Hot-working - is the deformation of a metal above the recrystallization
temperature. During hot working, only the shape of the metal changes; the
strength remains relatively unchanged because no strain hardening occurs.
Cold-working - Deformation of a metal below the recrystallization temperature.
During cold working, the number of dislocations increases, causing the metal to
be strengthened as its shape is changed.

(NOTE: The temperature at which a microstructure of new grains that have very low dislocation density
appears is known as the recrystallization temperature. The process of formation of new grains by heat
treating a cold-worked material is known as recrystallization)
 a. Forging - process where metal (Fe, Ti, Al) is heated and
shaped by plastic deformation (compressive forces). The
compressive force typically comes from hammer blows or a
press.

The forge or smithy is the workplace of a smith or a blacksmith. A basic smithy

contains a forge for heating the metals to a temperature where work hardening
ceases to accumulate, an anvil (to lay the metal pieces on while hammering),
and a slack tub (to rapidly cool and harden forged metal pieces). Tools include
tongs (not thongs) to hold the hot metal and hammers to strike the hot metal.
 b. Rolling - process of plastically deforming a metal by passing
it between rollers; a reduction in thickness results from
compressive stresses exerted by the rolls.

Hot Rolling & Cold Rolling

Hot rolling is the most common method of refining the cast structure of
ingots and billets to make primary shapes.
Cold rolling is most often a secondary forming process that is used to
make bar, sheet, strip and foil with superior surface finish and
dimensional tolerances.
c. Extrusion - A bar of metal is forced through a die orifice by a
compressive force that is applied to a ram

d. Drawing - is the pulling of a metal piece through a die having a

tapered bore by means of a tensile force that is applied on the exit
side
2003 Brooks/Cole, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning is a trademark used herein under license.

B. Casting Processes
Casting techniques are used when
1. The finished shape is so large or complicated that any other method
would be impractical
2. A particular alloy is so low in ductility that forming by either hot or
cold working would be difficult
3. In comparison to other fabrication processes, casting is the most
economical.

a. Sand Casting - A two-piece mold is formed by packing sand around a

pattern that has the shape of the intended casting.
b. Die Casting - The liquid metal is forced into a mold (die) under
pressure at a relatively high velocity, then allowed to solidify with the
pressure maintained.

c. Investment Casting (lost-wax casting) - (low volume, complex shapes like

jewelry, turbine blades, jewelry and dental crowns and inlays, and jet engine impellers)
d. Continuous Casting - (also called strand casting) is the
process whereby molten steel is solidified into a "semi-finished"
billet, bloom or slab for subsequent rolling in the finishing mills.
 Casting Defects Cavities
Blowholes, pinholes, shrinkage cavities, & porosity

Cracks in casting and are caused by hot tearing, hot cracking,

and lack of fusion (cold shut)
C. Miscellaneous

a. Powder Mettalurgy - A
fabrication technique involves
the compaction of powdered
metal, followed by a heat
treatment to produce a more
dense piece.
b. Welding - In welding, two or more metal parts are joined to
form a single piece when one-part fabrication is expensive or
inconvenient.

Some welding methods include:

Brazing is a joining process whereby a filler metal or alloy is heated to
melting temperature above 450 C (840 F).
Soldering is a process where two or more metals are joined together by
melting and flowing a filler metal into the joint, the melting point of
the filler metal is below 400 C (752 F).
 Heat Affected Zone (HAF) - The heat-affected zone is the
narrow region of the base metal adjacent to the weld bead,
which is metallurgically altered by the heat of welding.

A schematic diagram of
the fusion zone and
solidification of the weld
during fusion welding.
 Cracking in Welding might occur because of welding fixtures that do
not permit contraction of the weld during cooling, by narrow joints with
large depth-to-width ratios, by poor ductility of the deposited weld
metal, or by a high coefficient of thermal expansion coupled with low-
heat conductivity in the parent metal.

Hydrogen cracking occurs in the heat-affected zone of some steels as

hydrogen diffuses into this region when the weld cools
Methods of avoiding cracks

Preheating the surface of the steel before welding to remove moisture.

Post-weld heat treating immediately to force the hydrogen to escape.
Peening immediately after each pass is also beneficial because it
induces compressive stresses and offsets the tendency toward
cracking.
D. Annealing - is a heat treatment that alters the physical and
sometimes chemical properties of a material to increase
its ductility and reduce its hardness, making it more workable. It
involves heating a material to above
its recrystallization temperature, maintaining a suitable
temperature, and then cooling.

Spheroidize (steels):
Stress Relief: Reduce Make very soft steels for
stresses resulting from: good machining. Heat just
- plastic deformation below Teutectoid & hold for
- nonuniform cooling 15-25 h.
- phase transform.
Full Anneal (steels):
Types of Make soft steels for
good forming. Heat
Annealing to get g, then furnace-cool
Process Anneal:
to obtain coarse pearlite.
Negate effects of
cold working by
(recovery/ Normalize (steels): Deform
recrystallization) steel with large grains. Then heat
treat to allow recrystallization
and formation of smaller grains.
 Reported by:
Absalon, Jennylyn
Blanco, Jhomel
De Leon, Rowell
Ferrer, Cherish Antoinette
Imbat, Vina
Morante, Chrystalie
Salonga, Glenn
Tandoc, Marl Joshua