A material property is an intensive property of a

material A material is a matter, substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an Physical object, object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical property, physical ...

, i.e., a

physical property A physical property is any property of a physical system that is measurable. The changes in the physical properties of a system can be used to describe its changes between momentary states. A quantifiable physical property is called ''physical ...

or chemical 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 having a fixed value for a given material or substance is called material constant or constant of matter. (Material constants should not be confused with physical constants, that have a universal character.) A material property may also 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 (or approximately so) in a given operating range . Modeling them as linear functions can significantly simplify the differential

constitutive equation In physics and engineering, a constitutive equation or constitutive relation is a relation between two or more physical quantities (especially kinetic quantities as related to kinematic quantities) that is specific to a material or substance o ...

s that are used to describe the property. Equations describing relevant materials properties are often used to predict the attributes of a system. 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 ASTM International, formerly known as American Society for Testing and Materials, is a standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical international standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems and s ...

Acoustical properties

* Acoustical absorption * Speed of sound *

Sound reflection Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an Interface (matter), interface between two different medium (optics), media so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated. Common examples include the reflection o ...

*Sound transfer *Third order elasticity ( Acoustoelastic effect)

Atomic properties

* Atomic mass: (applies to each element) the average mass of the atoms of an element, in daltons (Da), a.k.a. atomic mass units (amu). *

Atomic number The atomic number or nuclear charge number (symbol ''Z'') of a chemical element is the charge number of its atomic nucleus. For ordinary nuclei composed of protons and neutrons, this is equal to the proton number (''n''p) or the number of pro ...

: (applies to individual atoms or pure elements) the number of protons in each nucleus *

Relative atomic mass Relative atomic mass (symbol: ''A''; sometimes abbreviated RAM or r.a.m.), also known by the deprecated synonym atomic weight, is a dimensionless physical quantity defined as the ratio of the average mass of atoms of a chemical element in a gi ...

, a.k.a. atomic weight: (applies to individual

isotope Isotopes are distinct nuclear species (or ''nuclides'') of the same chemical element. They have the same atomic number (number of protons in their Atomic nucleus, nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemica ...

s or specific mixtures of isotopes of a given element) (no units) * Standard atomic weight: the average relative atomic mass of a typical sample of the element (no units)

Chemical properties

* Corrosion resistance * Hygroscopy * pH * Reactivity * Specific internal surface area * Surface energy *

Surface tension Surface tension is the tendency of liquid surfaces at rest to shrink into the minimum surface area possible. Surface tension (physics), tension is what allows objects with a higher density than water such as razor blades and insects (e.g. Ge ...

Electrical properties

Capacitance Capacitance is the ability of an object to store electric charge. It is measured by the change in charge in response to a difference in electric potential, expressed as the ratio of those quantities. Commonly recognized are two closely related ...

Dielectric constant The relative permittivity (in older texts, dielectric constant) is the permittivity of a material expressed as a ratio with the electric permittivity of a vacuum. A dielectric is an insulating material, and the dielectric constant of an insul ...

* Dielectric strength * Electrical resistivity and conductivity * Electric susceptibility * Electrocaloric coefficient * Electrostriction *Magnetoelectric polarizability * Nernst coefficient (thermoelectric effect) * Permittivity * Piezoelectric constants * Pyroelectricity * Seebeck coefficient

Magnetic properties

* Curie temperature * Diamagnetism *

Hall coefficient The Hall effect is the production of a potential difference (the Hall voltage) across an electrical conductor that is transverse to an electric current in the conductor and to an applied magnetic field perpendicular to the current. It was d ...

Hysteresis Hysteresis is the dependence of the state of a system on its history. For example, a magnet may have more than one possible magnetic moment in a given magnetic field, depending on how the field changed in the past. Plots of a single component of ...

* Magnetostriction * Magnetocaloric coefficient * Magnetothermoelectric power ( magneto-Seebeck effect coefficient) * Magnetoresistance * Maximum energy product * Permeability * Piezomagnetism * Pyromagnetic coefficient * Spin Hall effect

Manufacturing properties

* Castability: How easily a high-quality casting can be obtained from the material *

Machinability rating Machinability is the ease with which a metal can be cut (machining, machined) permitting the removal of the material with a satisfactory surface finish, finish at low cost.Degarmo, p. 542. Materials with good machinability (free-machining material ...

*Machining speeds and feeds

Mechanical properties

Brittleness A material is brittle if, when subjected to stress (physics), stress, it fractures with little elastic deformation and without significant plastic deformation. Brittle materials absorb relatively little energy prior to fracture, even those of h ...

: 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 (GPa) 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 (MPa) * Creep: The slow and gradual deformation of an object with respect to time. If the s in a material exceeds the yield point, the strain caused in the material by the application of load does not disappear totally on the removal of load. The plastic deformation caused to the material is known as creep. At high temperatures, the strain due to creep is quite appreciable. *

Density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the ratio of a substance's mass to its volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' (or ''d'') can also be u ...

: Mass per unit volume (kg/m^3) *

Ductility Ductility refers to the ability of a material to sustain significant plastic Deformation (engineering), deformation before fracture. Plastic deformation is the permanent distortion of a material under applied stress, as opposed to elastic def ...

: Ability of a material to deform under tensile load (% elongation). It is the property of a material by which it can be drawn into wires under the action of tensile force. A ductile material must have a high degree of plasticity and strength so that large deformations can take place without failure or rupture of the material. In ductile extension, a material that exhibits a certain amount of elasticity along with a high degree of plasticity. * 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 The fatigue limit or endurance limit is the stress (mechanics), stress level below which an infinite number of loading cycles can be applied to a material without causing fatigue (material), fatigue failure. Some metals such as ferrous alloys and ...

: Maximum stress a material can withstand under repeated loading (MPa) * Flexural modulus * Flexural strength: Maximum bending stress a material can withstand before failure (MPa) * Fracture toughness: Ability of a material containing a crack to resist fracture (J/m^2) * Friction coefficient: The amount of force normal to surface which converts to force resisting relative movement of contacting surfaces between material pairs *

Hardness In materials science, hardness (antonym: softness) is a measure of the resistance to plastic deformation, such as an indentation (over an area) or a scratch (linear), induced mechanically either by Pressing (metalworking), pressing or abrasion ...

: Ability to withstand surface indentation and scratching (e.g. Brinell hardness number) *

Malleability Ductility refers to the ability of a material to sustain significant plastic Deformation (engineering), deformation before fracture. Plastic deformation is the permanent distortion of a material under applied stress, as opposed to elastic def ...

: Ability of the material to be flattened into thin sheets under applications of heavy compressive forces without cracking by hot or cold working means.This property of a material allows it to expand in all directions without rupture. * 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 (no units) * Resilience: Ability of a material to absorb energy when it is deformed elastically (MPa); combination of strength and elasticity * Shear modulus: Ratio of

shear stress Shear stress (often denoted by , Greek alphabet, Greek: tau) is the component of stress (physics), stress coplanar with a material cross section. It arises from the shear force, the component of force vector parallel to the material cross secti ...

to shear strain (MPa) * 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 (MPa/m^3) * Specific strength: Strength per unit density (Nm/kg) * Specific weight: Weight per unit volume (N/m^3) * Surface roughness: The deviations in the direction of the normal vector of a real surface from its ideal form *

Tensile strength Ultimate tensile strength (also called UTS, tensile strength, TS, ultimate strength or F_\text in notation) is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled before breaking. In brittle materials, the ultimate ...

: Maximum tensile stress of a material can withstand before failure (MPa) *

Toughness In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing.Viscosity Viscosity is a measure of a fluid's rate-dependent drag (physics), resistance to a change in shape or to movement of its neighboring portions relative to one another. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of ''thickness''; for e ...

: 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 (MPa) *

Young's modulus Young's modulus (or the Young modulus) is a mechanical property of solid materials that measures the tensile or compressive stiffness when the force is applied lengthwise. It is the modulus of elasticity for tension or axial compression. Youn ...

: Ratio of linear stress to linear strain (MPa) (influences the stiffness and flexibility of an ''object'')

Optical properties

* Absorbance: How strongly a chemical attenuates light * Birefringence *

Color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...

* Electro-optic effect *

Luminosity Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic energy per unit time, and is synonymous with the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object. In astronomy, luminosity is the total amount of electroma ...

* Optical activity * Photoelasticity * Photosensitivity *

Reflectivity The reflectance of the surface of a material is its effectiveness in Reflection (physics), reflecting radiant energy. It is the fraction of incident electromagnetic power that is reflected at the boundary. Reflectance is a component of the respon ...

Refractive index In optics, the refractive index (or refraction index) of an optical medium is the ratio of the apparent speed of light in the air or vacuum to the speed in the medium. The refractive index determines how much the path of light is bent, or refrac ...

Scattering In physics, scattering is a wide range of physical processes where moving particles or radiation of some form, such as light or sound, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by localized non-uniformities (including particles and radiat ...

* Transmittance

Radiological properties

* Attenuation coefficients *

Half-life Half-life is a mathematical and scientific description of exponential or gradual decay. Half-life, half life or halflife may also refer to: Film * Half-Life (film), ''Half-Life'' (film), a 2008 independent film by Jennifer Phang * ''Half Life: ...

* Neutron cross section * Specific activity

Thermal properties

* Phase diagram *

Boiling point The boiling point of a substance is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of a liquid equals the pressure surrounding the liquid and the liquid changes into a vapor. The boiling point of a liquid varies depending upon the surrounding envi ...

* Coefficient of thermal expansion *

Critical temperature Critical or Critically may refer to: *Critical, or critical but stable, medical states **Critical, or intensive care medicine *Critical juncture, a discontinuous change studied in the social sciences. *Critical Software, a company specializing in ...

* Curie point * Ductile-to-brittle transition temperature * Emissivity * Eutectic point * Flammability * Flash point * Glass transition temperature * Heat of vaporization * Inversion temperature *

Melting point The melting point (or, rarely, liquefaction point) of a substance is the temperature at which it changes state of matter, state from solid to liquid. At the melting point the solid and liquid phase (matter), phase exist in Thermodynamic equilib ...

Thermal conductivity The thermal conductivity of a material is a measure of its ability to heat conduction, conduct heat. It is commonly denoted by k, \lambda, or \kappa and is measured in W·m−1·K−1. Heat transfer occurs at a lower rate in materials of low ...

Thermal diffusivity In thermodynamics, thermal diffusivity is the thermal conductivity divided by density and specific heat capacity at constant pressure. It is a measure of the rate of heat transfer inside a material and has SI, SI units of m2/s. It is an intensive ...

* Thermal expansion *

Triple point In thermodynamics, the triple point of a substance is the temperature and pressure at which the three Phase (matter), phases (gas, liquid, and solid) of that substance coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium.. It is that temperature and pressure at ...

* Vapor pressure * Specific heat capacity

References

{{Reflist Chemical properties Materials science Physical quantities