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Mechanical Engineering vocabulary · Mechanics and Materials

Strain

Meaning in mechanical engineering, with examples

/streɪn/nounCore term

In mechanical engineering, strain means: How much a material stretches or shortens compared with its original length. It is a ratio with no unit and is often given in percent or in microstrain.

In Turkish: birim şekil değiştirme, gerinim, birim uzama

How it is used

Used in materials testing, stress analysis and measurements. Strain is measured with strain gauges glued to the part, and engineers talk about elastic strain, plastic strain and the stress-strain curve.

Example sentences

  1. We bonded two strain gauges to the beam to measure the strain under load.

  2. At this point the strain is no longer elastic, so the part will not return to its original shape.

Common collocations

  • elastic strain
  • plastic strain
  • strain gauge
  • stress-strain curve
  • measure strain
  • stressThe internal force inside a material divided by the area it acts on. It shows how hard a part is being pulled, pushed, bent or twisted and is measured in MPa or psi.
  • modulus of elasticityA material property that shows how stiff a material is: the ratio of stress to strain in the elastic range. It is about 200 GPa for steel and 70 GPa for aluminum.
  • yield strengthThe stress at which a material stops behaving elastically and starts to deform permanently. Designers usually keep working stresses well below this value.
  • tensile testA test in which a standard sample is pulled until it breaks, to measure properties such as yield strength, tensile strength and elongation.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Mechanics and Materials

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