Mechanical testing is a common component of engineering in many fields. If you are a project manager who is interested in learning about the process of testing materials before industrial construction or manufacturing, this article helps explain the importance and variety of mechanical testing.

What Does Mechanical Testing Do?

Mechanical testing is important when a new material is being applied to a project. Each building material has a range of properties that affect its strength. For example, no two batches of steel are exactly the same, and they can have varying strength. One batch of steel may be suitable for a project, while another is not. You might also need to do mechanical testing to compare how two different products will react. In choosing between two products of different costs, mechanical testing can help you determine the more affordable product will hold up to the standards that you need for your project. 

Tensile Testing

Tensile strength testing is a big determiner, at least for metals. It determines how much stress a material will take before it fails. During tensile testing, stress can be applied along different axes, since the construction of materials is not even throughout. Temperature elevation may also be used if you are predicting that the materials will be used at higher temperatures than room temperature. 

Hardness Testing

Hardness is the measure of how resistant a material is to change from pressure. For example, if your material will have a lot of weight on top of it, you don't want it to change size or shape unexpectedly, since that can make your system unstable. Any changes in shape should be controlled by your engineering processes and not by the limitations of your material. 

Torque Testing

For certain products, like fasteners, torque testing is very necessary. The mechanical testing team will see how much force it takes to rotate the fasteners unexpectedly. 

Fatigue Testing

Fatigue testing is different from tensile testing because it measures damage that occurs over a repeated series of loads on the material. 

A mechanical testing company will be the go-to source for figuring out what types of tests you need to do on your materials. Mechanical testing companies should be consulted whenever you are considering a new material for your products. They should also be used if the design or production of products change, since any new design or process can affect the different types of stress that your materials will face.