President, Wyoming Test Fixtures Inc. In my October 2015 column, I compared three V-notched shear test configurations used to measure the shear stiffness and shear strength of composite materials: The ...

As composite materials are used more extensively in structural applications, some test methods that once were considered very specialized and, therefore, not widely used, have become more significant.

Stress is defined as the force per unit area. Thus, the formula for calculating stress is: Where σ denotes stress, F is load and A is the cross sectional area. The most commonly used units for stress ...