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A carbon fibre is a slender reinforcement made predominantly of carbon, used to carry tension along its length. Its axial Young's modulus, tensile strength and mass density are especially useful when comparing how much elastic load a lightweight component can carry. A fibre's measured tensile strength also depends on defects and the length tested, so one strength value does not characterize every specimen.

Embedding carbon fibres in a polymer produces carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer. The composite matrix supports the fibre arrangement and permits fibre-matrix load transfer; the axial performance of an aligned assembly does not imply equal transverse performance. Tensile testing of single fibres measures the reinforcement response, while testing composite strips at different orientations measures how that response survives assembly into a composite material.

The shear-strength intercept $c$ at zero effective normal stress in a specified frictional failure envelope. It is a model parameter and is not automatically the tensile strength.

Fibre-matrix load transfer describes how interfacial shear stress transfers axial force between a reinforcing fibre and its surrounding composite matrix. For a cylindrical fibre of diameter $d$, axial force balance gives $d{\sigma }_f/dx=4\tau /d$ when $\tau$ is the appropriately signed interfacial shear stress.

The fibre stress is therefore small near a free end and builds over a transfer length. Short fibres may never reach their tensile strength before the interface slips or the matrix yields. The critical fibre length quantifies this competition in a simplified constant-shear model.

A hybrid fibre composite contains two or more types of reinforcing fibre in a common composite matrix. Combining carbon fibres and glass fibres, for example, provides another design choice besides changing the amount or orientation of a single reinforcement. The word hybrid specifies the combination of reinforcements, not a guarantee that every mechanical property improves.

For continuous, parallel fibres, perfect bonding and elastic axial loading, equal strain gives the extension of the longitudinal rule of mixturesHere the $V_i$ are constituent fractions by volume and the $E_i$ are axial Young's moduli. This estimate describes the initial elastic response. It does not by itself predict tensile strength: when one fibre population breaks, its load is redistributed through the composite matrix, changing the stress carried by the surviving population.

A fluid-filled fracture can open perpendicular to the least compressive principal stress. In a compression-positive contact approximation, effective stress is ${\sigma }_n^{\prime }={\sigma }_n-P_f$. Opening an initially intact plane of tensile strength $T_0$ requiresA sufficiently weak pre-existing crack can open near zero effective compression. Increasing isotropic pore fluid pressure translates all effective principal stresses without rotating their directions, so an opening fracture and a frictional normal fault can record compatible stress axes at different pressure episodes. Subsequent mineral precipitation creates a mineral vein; white appearance alone does not identify its filling mineral.

Both outer faces of the cantilever are loaded, so use the pine's lower longitudinal compressive strength, $40\mathrm{MPa}$, rather than its $85\mathrm{MPa}$ tensile strength. Consistent SI units give $M_A$ values $(2.564,2.143,0.7273)\times 10^5{\mathrm{m}}^2{\mathrm{s}}^{-2}$ for steel, aluminium and pine respectively. Their $M_B$ values are $5.734,8.748,11.499\mathrm{P}{\mathrm{a}}^{1/2}{\mathrm{m}}^3\mathrm{k}{\mathrm{g}}^{-1}$. Hence Design A: steel best, pine worst; Design B: pine best, steel worst. Aluminium is intermediate in both cases. These rankings concern the stated strength constraint; a toughness or deflection constraint could change feasibility.

The thin, pale, steep feature beside the fingers is plausibly a mineral-filled opening fracture, a mineral vein, rather than the whole coarse fault breccia band. Calcite is a plausible filling in this appearance, but its mineral identity would need a field or laboratory test. Opening normal to its approximately vertical north–south plane requires the smallest principal stress to be approximately east–west, consistent with the extension direction above.

For example, a compression-positive effective stress tensorhas east–west tension and can open a weak fracture whose tensile strength is at most $1$ MPa. More generally opening requires ${\sigma }_3-P_f<-T_0$, where $T_0$ is tensile strength. This illustrates hydraulic opening of a mineral vein: raising $P_f$ by $11$ MPa at the illustrative total stresses in part c translates all effective principal stresses by $-11$ MPa, producing this tensor without rotating its axes.

The vein and fault slip need not have formed simultaneously at those exact magnitudes: pressure transients, local stress changes and slip can alternate. Their orientations can nevertheless reflect the same normal-faulting stress regime. The source’s reference to “part d” is circular; the meaningful comparison is with part c.

Interpret the vertical, apparently unoffset fractures as opening geological joints. Their normals are east–west, so the least principal stress ${\sigma }_3$ must be east–west and sufficiently tensile in effective stress. The other two principal stresses lie within the vertical north–south geological joint plane; their ordering cannot be recovered from this fracture orientation alone.

One example, with compression positive and coordinates east, north, up, isHere ${\sigma }_1$ is vertical, ${\sigma }_2$ north–south, and ${\sigma }_3=-3\mathrm{MPa}$ east–west. The geological joint opens east–west when its tensile strength is $3\mathrm{MPa}$. An isotropic pore pressure can make the east–west effective stress tensile even while the total normal stress remains compressive. Draw opening arrows pointing away from the vertical fracture, rather than sliding arrows along it.

Draw a failure envelope in the $({\sigma }_n^{\prime },\tau )$ plane. A useful brittle shear-failure approximation is the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterionwhere $c$ is cohesion, $\phi$ the internal friction angle, and ${\sigma }_n^{\prime }$ the effective compressive normal stress. A circle wholly inside the envelope is below this ideal failure threshold. Increasing the differential stress expands it until it first touches the envelope: the tangent points identify the failing plane orientations. For a linear envelope, tangency impliesWith the angle convention above, the upper tangent point is at $2\theta =90^{\circ }+\phi$. Its plane therefore makes $45^{\circ }-\phi /2$ with the maximum-compression direction; there is a conjugate plane on the other side. For $\phi =30^{\circ }$, this is $30^{\circ }$, rather than the $45^{\circ }$ plane of maximum shear stress. An existing weak fault can reactivate first, with its own lower cohesion and friction, and need not have this optimum new-fracture orientation.

For tensile brittle fracture, add a tensile strength cutoff: failure occurs when ${\sigma }_3^{\prime }\le -T_0$, where $T_0>0$. The opening fracture is approximately perpendicular to the minimum-compression direction. Real rock envelopes curve, especially at small confinement; a straight shear envelope must not be extrapolated as an exact tensile law. High confinement can instead favor distributed or ductile deformation, so merely drawing a larger circle does not establish that brittle failure is the active mechanism.^[ref]

In the simplest strength-cutoff model, opening begins when the least compressive effective stress reaches minus the tensile strength: ${\sigma }_3^{\prime }=-T_0$ with compression positive. In Mohr's circle, this is contact with the vertical line ${\sigma }_n^{\prime }=-T_0$ at $\tau =0$. The criterion represents an opening mechanism and differs from frictional shear failure.

The ultimate tensile strength in an ordinary tension test is the maximum applied tensile force divided by the specimen's original cross-sectional area:It is the peak engineering stress, not necessarily the stress at final fracture and not the same as yield strength. A specimen with $A_0=10{\mathrm{mm}}^2$ and peak load $5\mathrm{kN}$ has tensile strength $500\mathrm{MPa}$. Necking reduces the current area, so true stress using that area can behave differently after the engineering-stress peak. Temperature, loading rate and specimen preparation belong to the test conditions.^[ref]

A yield point marks the onset of permanent deformation according to a stated experimental criterion. In a tensile testing experiment, low loads can produce recoverable extension, while higher loads leave a residual extension after unloading. A sharp transition may be visible in the stress-strain curve, but many specimens change gradually from mainly elastic to increasingly plastic response.

When no unambiguous sharp point exists, an offset proof stress gives an operational definition: draw a line parallel to the initial elastic slope and displaced by a specified engineering strain, then identify its intersection with the loading curve. The chosen offset must be reported. The yield point is distinct from both the limit of exact proportionality and the tensile strength at maximum load. This matters because a small measurable departure from linear response does not by itself establish a particular amount of permanent plastic strain.