UTS measures a material’s maximum resistance to breaking through stress testing. It is used for quality control and determining load carrying capacity in engineering processes. The breaking load is calculated by dividing the load at breaking point by the original area. Tensile strength is not always representative of maximum stress a material can withstand.
Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) is the maximum resistance a material has to breaking and is measured using stress testing. A stress test on a material will provide data that can be plotted to form the material’s load-strain curve and its stress-strain curve. When looking at a material’s stress-strain curve, its tensile strength is the highest point on the curve. It often occurs before the breaking point because the material may crack or weaken before breaking. The tensile strength of a material is often used for quality control purposes.
Stress testing is essential in engineering processes where the load carrying capacity of a material is important, such as in construction. These tests are useful for determining a material’s tensile strength, yield strength, elasticity, elastic limit, and proportional limit. The UTS test measures load and elongation as more stress is applied over a given period of time.
UTS measurements can be found for a variety of materials, including metals and plastics, and new materials with higher UTS measurements are often developed. The breaking load of a material is calculated by dividing the amount of the load at the breaking point by the original area, expressed in pounds per square inch or kilograms per square centimeter, depending on the system of measurement used. The test can be set up so that the testing machine separates the material at a rate of 0.2-20.0 inches (0.51-50.8 cm) per minute. This wide range of rates can affect UTS test results, so certain industry standards must be followed when performing these tests.
When under stress, the material can suffer permanent damage long before breaking point. Tensile strength is often used for quality control purposes because it is easily reproducible with respect to many other engineering tests, but it is not often used in component design because it is not necessarily representative of the maximum amount of stress the material can withstand.
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