What is Ductility?
Ductility is the property of a material to plastically deform under shear stress before breaking . Imagine in an unfortunate car accident instead of deforming, car breaks into many pieces like glass and flying everywhere. It would be devastating like bomb explosion. So Ducitile property is the important life-saving properties of engineering materials.
Glass has a very low ductility. Therefore it breaks with no noticeable deformation. Structural steel, on the other hand, deforms by more than 25% before cracking. Gold is so ductile that it can be formed as gold leaf to a thickness of a few atomic layers.
Ductility of the Material
What is the use of Ductility?
Materials that are only slightly ductile could cause injuries from flying parts if they burst. Materials with this property are important in the construction industry so that a structure “announces” its failure in a clearly visible way before it collapses when stresses are too high.
Ductile materials are also in demand in the automotive industry, since a car should deform plastically in the event of an accident and not tear apart. Ductility used to be synonymous with forgeability . Ductile fabrics are easy to cold form, e.g. by deep drawing , bending or stretching .
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