Stresses and strains

摘要

Materials integrity is at the heart of process safety. The foundation of ensuring a safe working environment is being able to rely on mechanisms, implements and structures, and the materials they are formed of not to fail without warning. Materials fail under load, when sufficient forces are applied. The forces' effects depend on their size, the directions they act in, and the nature and size of the material(s). To understand the circumstances in which materials such as metals and plastics are more likely to fail, we first have to understand their composition and the way forces act on them.