Compression Test
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• COMPRESSION LOADS occur in a wide variety of material
applications, such as steel building structures and concrete
bridge supports, as well as in material processing, such as
during the rolling and forging of a billet.
• Characterizing the material response to these loads
requires tests that measure the compressive behavior of
the materials
• Results of these tests provide accurate input parameters
for product-or process-design computations.
• Compression stress–strain tests may be conducted if in-
service forces are of this type.
• A compression test is conducted in a manner similar to the
tensile test, except that the force is compressive and the
specimen contracts along the direction of the stress.
• Equations below are utilized to
compute compressive stress and
strain,
• By convention, a compressive force is taken to be
negative, which yields a negative stress.
• Furthermore, since l0 is greater than lf compressive
strains computed from Equation are necessarily also
negative.
• Tensile tests are more common because they are
easier to perform; also, for most materials used in
structural applications, very little additional
information is obtained from compressive tests.
• Compressive tests are used when a material’s behavior
under large and permanent (i.e., plastic) strains is
desired, as in manufacturing applications, or when the
material is brittle in tension
Advantage over other methods
• Under certain circumstances, compression testing
may also have advantages over other testing
methods.
– Tension testing is by far the most extensively
developed and widely used test for material behavior,
and it can be used to determine all aspects of the
mechanical behavior of a material under tensile loads,
including its elastic, yield, and plastic deformation and
its fracture properties.
– However, the extent of deformation in tension testing
is limited by necking.
• To understand the behavior of materials under
the large plastic strains during deformation
processing, measurements must be made
beyond the tensile necking limit.
– Compression tests and torsion tests are
alternative approaches that overcome this
limitation.
• Furthermore, compression-test specimens are simpler
in shape, do not require threads or enlarged ends for
gripping, and use less material than tension-test
specimens.
• Therefore, compression tests are often useful for
subscale testing and for component testing where
tension-test specimens would be difficult to produce.
• Examples of these applications include through-
thickness property measurements in plates and
forgings &
• Weld heat-affected zones, and precious metals where
small amounts of material are available.
Test
• The compression test consists of deforming a
cylindrical specimen to produce a thinner cylinder of
larger diameter (upsetting).
• The compression test is a convenient method for
determining the stress-strain response of materials at
large strains (ε > 0.5) because the test is not subject to
the instability of necking that occurs in a tension test.
• The test is also used with brittle materials, for which it
is extremely difficult to machine a specimen and
tensile test it in perfect alignment
Difficulties
• There are two inherent difficulties with the
compression test that must be overcome by the
test technique:
• Buckling of the specimen and Barreling of the
specimen.
• Both conditions cause nonuniform stress and
strain distributions in the specimen that make it
difficult to analyze the results
Buckling
• Buckling is a mode of failure characterized by
an unstable lateral material deflection caused
by compressive stresses.
• Buckling is controlled by selecting a specimen
geometry with a low length-to-diameter
ratio.
• L/D should be less than 2, and a compression
specimen with L/D = 1 is often used
• Practical experience with ductile materials,
shows that even L/D ratios as low as 2.5
lead to unsatisfactory deformation
responses.
• For these geometries, even slightly eccentric
loading or nonparallel compression plates
will lead to shear distortion, as shown in b
• Therefore, L/D ratios less than 2.0 are
normally used to avoid buckling and provide
accurate measurements of the plastic
deformation behavior of materials in
compression
Barreling
• Barreling is the generation of a convex surface on
the exterior of a cylinder that is deformed in
compression.
• The cross section of such a specimen is barrel
shaped.
• Barreling is caused by the friction between the
end faces of the compression specimen and the
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anvils that apply the load
• As the cylinder decreases in height (h) it wants
to increase in diameter (D) because of the
volume of an incompressible material must
remain constant.
• As the material spreads outward over the anvils, it is
restrained by the friction at this interface.
• The material near the mid-height position is less restrained
by friction and spreads laterally to the greatest extent.
• The material next to the anvil surfaces is restrained from
spreading the most; hence, the creation of a barreled
profile.
• This deformation pattern also leads to the development of
a region of relatively undeformed materials under the anvil
surfaces
• Because barreling increases with the specimen ratio D/h,
the force to deform a compression cylinder increases with
D/h.
Fig. 1 Modes of deformation in compression. (a) Buckling, when L/D > 5. (b) Shearing,
When L/D > 2.5. (c) Double barreling, when L/D > 2.0 and friction is present at the contact
surfaces. (d) Barreling, when L/D < 2.0 and friction is present at the contact surfaces. (e)
Homogenous compression, when L/D < 2.0 and no friction is present at the contact
surfaces. (f) Compressive instability due to work-softening material
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Load-deformation curves for compression tests with specimens having
different initial values of D/h
• Friction between the ends of the test
specimen and the compression platens
constrains lateral flow at the contact
surfaces, which leads to barreling or bulging
of the cylindrical surface.
• Under these circumstances, for L/D ratios on
the order of 2.0, a double barrel forms, as
shown in Fig. 1(c).
• Smaller L/D ratios lead to a single barrel,
as in Fig. 1(d).
• Barreling indicates that the deformation is nonuniform
(i.e., the stress and strain vary throughout the test
specimen), and such tests are not valid for
measurement of the bulk elastic and plastic properties
of a material.
• Barreling, however, can be beneficial for the
measurement of the localized fracture properties of a
material.
• If the compression test can be carried out without
friction between the specimen and compression
platens, barreling does not occur, as shown in Fig. 1(e),
and the deformation is uniform (homogenous).
• For measurement of the bulk deformation properties
of materials in compression, this configuration must be
achieved.
• A final form of irregular deformation in axial
compression is an instability that is the
antithesis of necking in tension.
• In this case, the instability occurs due to work
softening of the material and takes the form
of rapid, localized expansion, as shown in Fig.
1(f).
Standards
• Axial compression tests for determining the stress-strain behavior
of metallic materials are conducted by techniques described in test
standards, such as
• ASTM E 9, “Compression Testing of Metallic Materials at Room
Temperature”
• DIN 50106, “Compression Test, Testing of Metallic Materials”
• ASTM E 209, “Compression Tests of Metallic Materials at Elevated
Temperatures with Conventional or Rapid Heating Rates and Strain
Rates”
• This section briefly reviews the factors that influence the generation
of valid test data for tests conducted in accordance with ASTM E 9
and the capabilities of conventional universal testing machines
(UTMs) for compression testing.