Evaluation of mechanical properties using shear-punch testing

The evaluation of mechanical properties like yield and ultimate tensile strengths from shear-punch tests is important when the availability of material is limited. A shear-punch test setup was built in our laboratory and the mechanical properties for different materials; mild steel, pure Al, Zn, brass (Cu-30% Zn by wt.), Al 6061, Austenitic and Martensitic stainless steels were evaluated. A new method using 1% offset criterion in conjunction with normalized shear-punch curves was used to measure the shear yield strength. A linear correlation between the shear data and tensile data was established for yield and ultimate strengths. The variation of the yield and ultimate shear strength was studied as a function of the sample thickness and die-punch clearance for soft, medium and high strength materials.