List of materials properties
A material's property is an intensive property of some material, i.e. a physical property that does not depend on the amount of the material. These quantitative properties may be used as a metric by which the benefits of one material versus another can be compared, thereby aiding in materials selection.
A property may be a constant or may be a function of one or more independent variables, such as temperature. Materials properties often vary to some degree according to the direction in the material in which they are measured, a condition referred to as anisotropy. Materials properties that relate to different physical phenomena often behave linearly in a given operating range. Modeling them as linear can significantly simplify the differential constitutive equations that the property describes.
Some materials are used in relevant equations to predict the attributes of a system a priori.
The properties are measured by standardized test methods. Many such methods have been documented by their respective user communities and published through the Internet; see ASTM International.
Acoustical properties
- Acoustical absorption
- Speed of sound
- Sound reflection
- Sound transfer
- Third order elasiticty
Atomic properties
- Atomic mass:applies to all elements
- Atomic number: applies to pure elements only
- Atomic weight: applies to individual isotopes or specific mixtures of isotopes of a given element
Chemical properties
- Corrosion resistance
- Hygroscopy
- pH
- Reactivity
- Specific internal surface area
- Surface energy
- Surface tension
Electrical properties
- Capacitance
- Dielectric constant
- Dielectric strength
- Electrical resistivity and conductivity
- Electric susceptibility
- Electrocaloric coefficient
- Electrostriction
- Magnetoelectric Polarizability
- Nernst coefficient
- Permittivity
- Piezoelectric constants
- Pyroelectricity
- Seebeck coefficient
Environmental properties
- Embodied energy
- Embodied water
Magnetic properties
- Curie temperature
- Diamagnetism
- Hall coefficient
- Hysteresis
- Magnetostriction
- Magnetocaloric coefficient
- Magnetothermoelectric power
- Magnetoresistance
- Permeability
- Piezomagnetism
- Pyromagnetic coefficient
- Spin Hall effect
Manufacturing properties
- Castability: How easily a quality casting can be obtained from the material
- Machinability rating
- Machining speeds and feeds
Mechanical properties
- Brittleness: Ability of a material to break or shatter without significant deformation when under stress; opposite of plasticity,examples:glass,concrete,cast iron, ceramics etc.
- Bulk modulus: Ratio of pressure to volumetric compression or ratio of the infinitesimal pressure increase to the resulting relative decrease of the volume.
- Coefficient of restitution:the ratio of the final to initial relative velocity between two objects after they collide. Range : 0-1, 1 for perfectly elastic collision.
- Compressive strength: Maximum stress a material can withstand before compressive failure
- Creep: The slow and gradual deformation of an object with respect to time
- Ductility: Ability of a material to deform under tensile load
- Durability: Ability to withstand wear, pressure, or damage; hard-wearing.
- Elasticity: Ability of a body to resist a distorting influence or stress and to return to its original size and shape when the stress is removed
- Fatigue limit: Maximum stress a material can withstand under repeated loading
- Flexibility: Ability of an object to bend or deform in response to an applied force; pliability; complementary to stiffness
- Flexural modulus
- Flexural strength : The stresses in a material just before it yields.
- Fracture toughness: Ability of a material containing a crack to resist fracture
- Friction coefficient: The amount of force normal to surface which converts to force resisting relative movement of contacting surfaces between material pair
- Hardness: Ability to withstand surface indentation and scratching
- Malleability: Ability of the material to be flattened into thin sheets under applications of heavy compressive forces without cracking by hot or cold working means.
- Mass diffusivity: Ability of one substance to diffuse through another
- Plasticity: Ability of a material to undergo irreversible or permanent deformations without breaking or rupturing; opposite of brittleness
- Poisson's ratio: Ratio of lateral strain to axial strain
- Resilience: Ability of a material to absorb energy when it is deformed elastically ; combination of strength and elasticity
- Shear modulus: Ratio of shear stress to shear strain
- Shear strength: Maximum shear stress a material can withstand
- Slip: A tendency of a material's particles to undergo plastic deformation due to a dislocation motion within the material. Common in Crystals.
- Specific modulus: Modulus per unit volume
- Specific strength: Strength per unit density
- Specific weight: Weight per unit volume
- Stiffness: Ability of an object to resist deformation in response to an applied force; rigidity; complementary to flexibility
- Surface roughness:the deviations in the direction of the normal vector of a real surface from its ideal form.
- Tensile strength: Maximum tensile stress of a material can withstand before failure
- Toughness: Ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing ; a material's resistance to fracture when stressed; combination of strength and plasticity
- Viscosity: A fluid's resistance to gradual deformation by tensile or shear stress; thickness
- Yield strength: The stress at which a material starts to yield plastically
- Young's modulus: Ratio of linear stress to linear strain
- Strength of materials etc.
Optical properties
- Absorbance - How strongly a chemical attenuates light
- Birefringence
- Color
- Electro-optic effect
- Luminosity
- Optical activity
- Photoelasticity
- Photosensitivity
- Reflectivity
- Refractive index
- Scattering
- Transmittance
Radiological properties
- Neutron cross-section
- Specific activity
- Half life
Thermal properties
- Binary phase diagram
- Boiling point
- Coefficient of thermal expansion
- Critical temperature
- Curie point
- Emissivity
- Eutectic point
- Flammability
- Flash point
- Glass transition temperature
- Heat of vaporization
- Inversion temperature
- Melting point
- Specific heat
- Thermal conductivity
- Thermal diffusivity
- Thermal expansion
- Triple point
- Vapor pressure
- Specific heat capacity