What is the maximum stress a material can withstand when being pulled before it breaks?

• A. Hardness
• B. Ductility
• C. Tensile Strength
• D. Toughness

Answer: (C)

The maximum stress a material can withstand in tension before it breaks is called tensile strength (often referred to as the ultimate tensile strength). It is the force-per-unit-area the material can sustain as it is pulled until fracture, calculated as stress = force / original cross-sectional area and expressed in MPa. On a stress–strain curve, it corresponds to the highest engineering stress the material reaches just before failure. This is different from hardness, which measures resistance to surface indentation; from ductility, which describes how much plastic deformation occurs before breaking; and from toughness, which is the total energy absorbed up to fracture (the area under the curve).