Mechanics of Materials Laboratory

 

 

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Contact: jschaefr@iastate.edu

 
Flexure Test

The Mechanics of Materials Laboratory will open your eyes to new types of stresses and strains you didn't even know existed.


When a material is loaded in tension, compression, torsion, etc., the material experiences internal stresses and strains. By testing a large number of specimens, we can determine how much stress or strain a particular material can take before it plasticlaly deforms or fails.


In this experiment a piece of wood is flexed until failure occurs. Do you know what type of failure we see here? Look at the Flexure Experiment to find out.