Tensile tests on cylindrical samples of metallic materials at room temperature.
The key use and application properties of components and materials are often evaluated based on their mechanical properties. For metals, in addition to hardness testing, tensile tests are the most common technical mechanical test procedure.
Tensile testing provides a very good and comprehensive assessment of the material behaviour under uniaxial quasi-static loading. The stress and strain coefficients, which are measured during tensile testing, are used in a wide range of component calculations.
Even if it is possible to derive the tensile strength of metallic materials from the results of hardness testing under certain pre-conditions, these derived values are only an estimate and involve significant uncertainty in some cases. Reliable and precise statements regarding the tensile strength are only possible using tensile testing. In addition to tensile strength, tensile tests also allow other mechanical properties of the material to be determined, such as the yield strength, elongation at fracture and necking at fracture.