Which material has more strength, steel or aluminum?
lolitahe69 > 11-25-2021, 06:38 AM
Strength is a measure of the maximum stress (force divided by area) a material can sustain without failing.
The ultimate tensile strength is the maximum stress a material can sustain in tension under any conditions. However, this isn’t very useful because most metals begin to deform plastically at much lower stresses. For a structural material, this yield stress or yield strength represents the maximum stress that can be applied in service.
A table of yield stresses can be found on page 12 of this databook. You’ll see that steels can have yield stresses anywhere between 170 and 1155 MPa, whereas aluminium alloys can have yield stresses between 30 and 500 MPa. The reason for these ranges is that yield stress is heavily dependent on a wide range of factors including alloy composition, heat treatment and amount of plastic deformation applied to the metal.
In fact, pure, annealed aluminium has a yield stress of 30 MPa, making it less strong than any steel.