This document is an updated (Fall 2015) sophomore materials science and engineering tensile testing laboratory handout that introduces students to the atomic-level processes that are responsible for plastic deformation. By performing standard tensile tests on a ductile metal in conjunction with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, the goal is to help students understand the relationship between macroscopic plastic behavior and the underlying atomic-level mechanisms that involve dislocation motion to facilitate slip along closely-packed planes.

Updates are designed to improve student conceptual understanding of the material and are based on the results of a pilot study conducted on the Summer 2014 MSE 235 course and a study in progress of the Fall 2015 course offering.  Here is the previous Fall 2014 version of the lab, and the original Learning Module on the Atomic Picture of Plastic Deformation in Metals.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Aisling Coughlan, Kendra A. Erk, David Ray Johnson, Tanya Faltens, Alejandro Strachan, Heidi A Diefes-Dux (2015), "Tensile Testing Laboratory: Nanoscale and Macroscale Metal Samples," https://nanohub.org/resources/23130.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. education
2. educational resources
3. materials science
4. metals
5. molecular dynamics (MD)
6. NCN Group - Materials Science
7. Tensile testing