Destructive testing

In destructive testing, tests are carried out to the specimen's failure, in order to understand a specimen's structural performance or material behaviour under different loads. These tests are generally much easier to carry out, yield more information, and are easier to interpret than nondestructive testing.

Destructive testing is most suitable, and economic, for objects which will be mass produced, as the cost of destroying a small number of specimens is negligible. It is usually not economic to do destructive testing where only one or very few items are to be produced (for example, in the case of a building).

Some types of destructive testing:

Stress tests
Crash tests
Hardness tests
Metallographic tests


Stress testing is a form of testing that is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results. Stress testing may have a more specific meaning in certain industries, such as fatigue testing for materials.

A crash test is a form of destructive testing usually performed in order to ensure safe design standards in crashworthiness and crash compatibility for automobiles or related components.

Hardness is the measure of how resistant solid matter is to various kinds of permanent shape change when a force is applied. Macroscopic hardness is generally characterized by strong intermolecular bonds, however the behavior of solid materials under force is complex, therefore there are different measurements of hardness: scratch hardness, indentation hardness, and rebound hardness.

Hardness is dependent on ductility, elasticity, plasticity, strain, strength, toughness, viscoelasticity, and viscosity.

Common examples of hard matter are ceramics, concrete, metals, and superhard materials, which can be contrasted with soft matter

Metallography is the study of the physical structure and components of metals, typically using microscopy.

Ceramic and polymeric materials may also be prepared using metallographic techniques, hence the terms ceramography, plastography and, collectively, materialography.

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