murtokohtaan

Murtokohtaan is the illative form of the Finnish noun murtokohta, referring to the fracture point of a material. In Finnish technical language it denotes the state or location at which a material or specimen fails and breaks under applied stress. The term is common in materials science, mechanical testing, and fracture mechanics, and appears in phrases such as murtokohtaan asti (up to the fracture point) or murtokohtaan saakka (to the fracture point).

In testing, the fracture point is typically determined in a tensile test (vetokoe) or similar load-to-failure experiment, where load and deformation are recorded until failure. The stress corresponding to the fracture is called the fracture stress, and the strain at fracture is the fracture strain. These measures, together with toughness and other properties, characterize how a material behaves under extreme loading and how it will fail.

Factors influencing the fracture point include material ductility, microstructure, presence of flaws or cracks, temperature, loading rate, and environmental conditions such as corrosion. In ductile materials the fracture point occurs after yielding and plastic deformation; in brittle materials it may occur soon after the elastic limit, with little plastic deformation.

Practically, the fracture point informs design decisions, safety factors, and failure analysis. While it is a specific point in a stress–strain curve, it is part of broader concepts in fracture mechanics, such as flaw tolerance and critical stress intensity.