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Background It is essential that both designers and engineers know how materials perform if they are to be used. There are certain properties that can be measured to ascertain whether a material is suitable for the job at hand. These include: • Hardness • Toughness • Tensile Strength • Elasticity • Fatigue • Creep To measure these properties special tests have been developed. This report will examine the hardness, toughness and tensile tests. All of these tests are destructive, usually ending with an unusable test piece after completion of the test. These tests provide a standardisation of materials providing assured quality in production and allowing factors of safety to be built into components where it is needed e.g. Airplanes, Bridges. Hardness Tests Hardness is tested by measuring a material resistance to surface indentation and sc