Introduction

A compression test determines behavior of materials under crushing loads.

The specimen is compressed and deformation at various loads is recorded.
Compressive stress and strain are calculated and plotted as a stress-strain
diagram which is used to determine elastic limit, proportional limit, yield
point, yield strength, true stress - true strain curve and engineering stress
- engineering strain curve.
The purpose of this experiment is to determine the stress-strain curve of a
material through the compression test. Larger strains can be achieved
from compression tests on short cylinders. However, homogenous
compression is difficult to achieve as a result of the friction between the
ends of the specimen and the tools. Because of the restriction in flow at
the ends, barreling at the specimen is caused by the cones of undeformed
material penetrating inwards from each end. On the other side, longer
cylinders under uniaxial compression are more likely to buckle than to
barrel. To obtain stress-strain curve in axial compression Cooke and Larke
developed a method of extrapolating to the true stress in a cylinder of
infinite length. Their method required the compression of cylinders with
equal initial diameters but varying heights to chosen ratios. Watts and
Ford modified this test by applying a series of equal loads.
Stress-strain diagrams for compression have different shapes from those
for tension. Ductile materials such as steel, aluminum and brass have
proportional limits in compression very close to those in tension. Therefore
the initial regions of their compression stress-strain diagrams are very
similar to the tension diagrams. However, when yielding begins, the
behavior is quite different. In a tensile test, the specimen is stretched,
necking may occur, and fracture ultimately takes place. When a small
specimen of ductile material is compressed, it begins to bulge outward on
the sides and become barrel shaped. With increasing load, the specimen is
flattened out, thus offering increased resistance to further shortening
(which means the stress-strain curve goes upward).
Brittle materials in compression typically have an initial linear region
followed by a region in which the shortening increases at a higher rate
than does the load. Thus, the compression stress-strain diagram has a
shape that is similar to the shape of the tensile diagram. However, brittle
materials usually reach much higher ultimate stresses in compression than
intension. Also, unlike ductile materials in compression, brittle materials
actually fracture or break at the maximum load.

Figure 1: Compression Test Stress-Strain Curve & Compression Test

Equipment

2) a.

d0/h0 - True Strain Graph

Figure 2: d0/h0 True Strain

0= 10mm (initial diameter)

0= 20.07 mm, 10 mm, 5.02 mm, 3.34 mm (initial length)
00= 0.5, 1, 2, 3
Those values are used to draw the graph above. For every F value each
specimens strain rate is determined and connected with a line.
b. According to given excel data and the desired force value (5, 10, 15, 20,
25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, 150,
160 kN):
The value of is found at d0/h0=0 for every F value.
=0
=ln(/0)
As Watts and Ford requires, we need to extend the lines drawn above to
d0/h0=0 to get the strain value for infinite length specimen. We do this by
previous procedure. After that we use the found strain values to get h
and use h to obtain A0 values. After that we proceed to the next step,
obtaining the true stress strain curve.

0= (10)2/4
=00/
=/

True Stress - Strain curve

Figure 3: True Stress-Strain Curve of the 20 mm length specimen

c. Following is engineering stress strain calculations.

0= F/ 0
0= (10)2/4
The engineering strain can be found.
=h-h0/h0

Engineering Stress - Strain Curve

Figure 4: Engineering Stress-Strain Curve of 20 mm length specimen

3) =+n
Trendline function of the Excel has used to obtain the coefficients.
Again for the 20 mm length specimen,
y = 380,72e5,0769x
H= 380,72 ;
n=5,0769

Conclusion
In this experiment, obtained results are all expected ones. So we got the
purpose of the experiment, and observed the results accordingly.
The theory required taking same diameter different length specimens and
applying same force values to all of them, then recording strains and
manipulating the data to get the infinite length specimens strain data. All
steps could be followed easily and graphs are all expected.
As you can see from the picture above short specimens barreled but the
long one was buckled.
Compressive stress strain curve is a little bit different from tension
curves. The difference is stress is always increasing as the material
compresses, its strength increases.