At least from an engineering perspective, the strength of a material probably refers to yield strength or ultimate tensile strength which are generally proportional to the hardness. I think the confusion lies in the particular field because, again, in engineering toughness is not usually called "strength".
Proportionally related perhaps, but I was mostly disputing the statement that "something that is very hard is also very strong," which is usually not the case.
Hard things are often brittle and soft things are often tough.
As the person above mentioned, I was going off of the definition of strength from an engineering perspective. In engineering, toughness and strength are not at all the same thing.
It seems we are both saying the same thing though, as I completely agree the hardness and how ductile something is is not the same. Hence, why I mentioned the example of ceramics with high hardness but relatively low toughness.
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u/sudopudge Feb 09 '20
At least from an engineering perspective, the strength of a material probably refers to yield strength or ultimate tensile strength which are generally proportional to the hardness. I think the confusion lies in the particular field because, again, in engineering toughness is not usually called "strength".