Glossary
Materials Engineer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential materials engineer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key materials engineer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in materials engineer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ABET
- Engineering program accreditor.
- Alloy
- Mix of metals.
- CAD
- Computer-aided design.
- Composite
- Combined materials.
- Corrosion
- Chemical degradation.
- Fatigue
- Failure from repeated loads.
- FE exam
- Fundamentals of Engineering exam.
- Fracture surface
- Broken face.
- Hardness
- Resistance to indentation.
- Microstructure
- Internal structure.
- PE license
- Professional Engineer license.
- Polymer
- Plastic material.
- SEM
- Scanning electron microscope.
- Specification
- Detailed requirements.
- Tensile strength
- Resistance to pulling.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Materials Engineer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Materials Engineer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.