In my haste, I gave you figures for yield strength rather than ultimate.
Are you designing shearing dies or parts that need to sustain shear loading?

If designing parts to survive shear loading keep in mind that in ductile
materials, deformation and/or necking (in the case of tensile loading) can
increase the stress in the part without significant increase in load when in
the failure region of the stress - strain curve.

Designing a ductile part assuming that it will stay the same shape (and load
bearing cross section) all the way up to the ultimate stress can be
dangerous.

If you are intentionally cutting something, ultimate stress is your figure;
if you are designing a part for safe use, yield stress is what you should
design with.

"Mechanics of Materials" by Gere & Timoshenko is a good reference, though
the other book(s) mentioned in the thread would likely do fine.

hth,
StaticsJason

PS: A36 is so named because its tensile yield strength is 36ksi.

"Statics" wrote in message
...
The rule of thumb is shear strength = ~1/3 of the tensile strength. There
are some exceptions...like carbon thread, glass fiber, etc. iirc, 1018C
runs about 30 ksi, so shear strength is ~10ksi.

StaticsJason

"Bert" wrote in message
...
Can anyone here provide the ultimate shear strengths of copper (both
hard and annealed), yellow brass, and A36 or 1018 steel? Thanks.

Bert