How to Answer: What is the 'Young's Modulus' of a material?
Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Mechanical Engineer job interview.
12. What is the 'Young's Modulus' of a material?
How to Answer
Your interviewer will likely ask you knowledge-based questions to understand how well you are able to explain concepts to others. Be prepared for questions like this one by practicing a few possibilities ahead of time. This is a fairly straightforward question regarding material properties. Young's Modulus, also referred to as the Modulus of Elasticity, is a measurement of the stiffness of a material. It defines the relationship between the deformation a material experiences (strain) to the force applied per unit area (stress). Young's Modulus can also be described as the slope of the linear portion of a stress-strain curve, and is very useful for predicting the amount that a designed part or assembly will deform when subjected to a given load.
Written by Jason Toby on October 12th, 2020
Answer Example
"The Young's Modulus is a measure of how stiff a material is, or how much it will deform when a load is applied. Specifically, it is the ratio between the stress and strain of a material in the elastic portion of a stress-strain curve. Given the same geometry and applied load, a material with a lower Young's Modulus will experience more deformation than a material with a higher Young's Modulus. This can be important when using tools like Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to predict when a particular design will fail when subjected to a certain load."
Written by Jason Toby on October 12th, 2020