Mechanical testing

Mechanical testing measures how materials or components deform, withstand loads, or fail under applied forces. Tests include tension, compression, bending, impact, and repeated loading.

Tensile testing: A test that stretches a specimen to measure its response to an increasing tensile load. It produces stress–strain data and measures properties such as tensile strength and elongation.
Stress (mechanics): A measure of internal force per unit area within a material. Test loads are converted into stress to compare specimens of different sizes.
Materials selection: The process of choosing materials to meet a product’s performance, manufacturing, cost, and environmental requirements. Measured mechanical properties help determine whether a candidate material can meet design loads.
Destructive testing: Testing that damages or consumes a specimen to determine its properties or performance. Many mechanical tests require a specimen to deform permanently or fracture.
Compression testing: A test that applies compressive load to measure a specimen’s deformation and failure response. It examines behavior under squeezing loads, which tensile tests do not characterize.
Strain (mechanics): A dimensionless measure of deformation relative to an object's original dimensions. Measured changes in specimen length or shape become strain values.
Failure analysis: The systematic investigation of how and why a material, component, or system failed. Mechanical tests can reproduce suspected loading conditions and identify weak behavior.
Non-destructive testing: Inspection methods that evaluate materials or components without impairing their future use. It detects flaws without usually measuring bulk mechanical response by loading a specimen to failure.
Bend testing: A test that loads a specimen in flexure to assess its bending response or resistance to fracture. It probes flexural strength and ductility when a material is bent rather than pulled directly.
Stress–strain curve: A graph showing the relationship between stress and strain during deformation. It organizes tensile-test measurements into elastic, yielding, and plastic response.

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Electrical techniquesCompared with: It probes physical response through force rather than electrical signals.