ABSTRACT
Some very basic failure analyses can be accomplished without truly understanding the effects of various stresses and the materials they act on. In the real world, a good understanding of stresses and their effects on materials is crucial to accurate failure analysis. Confusing many people is the fact that the lower strength material is almost always more ductile and usually has a much greater distance between the yield and fracture points. Most engineered designs use ductile materials and use the yield strength as the primary design criteria, applying an appropriate safety factor. The fatigue strength of a metal depends both on how heavily the part is loaded and how many times the load is applied. Plain carbon steel is an alloy of carbon and iron. The real value of the carbon is that it gives steel a huge improvement in mechanical properties compared to those of the basic iron.
