Tensile and shear strengths are of great importance in mechanical engineering and many other engineering disciplines. Different methods have been proposed for determining these properties and can be found in the literature. The common point in all these methods is that the shear and tensile strengths are measured separately from tensile and shear tests. The ratio of tensile strength to shear strength is reported to be constant. Moreover, little attention has been provided to the study of strain rate effect on this ratio. In this work, a new specimen is introduced to measure the ratio of tensile strength and shear strength under quasi-static conditions and different strain rates just by conducting some simple tension test. Three different materials, Aluminum, Brass and Steel are used to address generality of the procedure and the conclusions. The numerical simulations of the test procedure are performed using LS-DYNA software to clarify the test results and also to study the governing failure mechanisms. In the method described in this work, a number of specimens with different ratio of tensile to shear areas are tested in simple tension and the ratio corresponding to the transition from tensile to shear failure is determined. This ratio in fact exhibits the relation between tensile and shear strength of material. Dynamic tests reveal that the ratio of tensile to shear strengths is not influenced by strain rate. The results obtained in this work agree well with those reported in the literature
