In engineering and materials science, necking is a mode of tensile deformation where relatively large amounts of strain localize disproportionately in a small region of the material. The resulting prominent decrease in local cross-sectional area provides the basis for the name "neck". Because the local strains in the neck are large, necking is often closely associated with yielding, a form of plastic deformation associated with ductile materials, often metals or polymers. Once necking has begun, the neck becomes the exclusive location of yielding in the material, as the reduced area gives the neck the largest local stress.

Necking results from an instability during tensile deformation when the cross-sectional area of the sample decreases by a greater proportion than the material strain hardens. Armand Considère published the basic criterion for necking in 1885, in the context of the stability of large scale structures such as bridges. Three concepts provide the framework for understanding neck formation.

The latter two effects determine the stability while the first effect determines the neck's location.

Instability (onset of necking) is expected to occur when an increase in the (local) strain produces no net increase in the load, F. This will happen when

This leads to

with the T subscript being used to emphasize that these stresses and strains must be true values. Necking is thus predicted to start when the slope of the true stress / true strain curve falls to a value equal to the true stress at that point.

Necking commonly arises in both metals and polymers. However, while the phenomenon is caused by the same basic effect in both materials, they tend to have different types of (true) stress-strain curve, such that they should be considered separately in terms of necking behaviour. For metals, the (true) stress tends to rise monotonically with increasing strain, although the gradient (work hardening rate) tends to fall off progressively. This is primarily due to a progressive fall in dislocation mobility, caused by interactions between them. With polymers, on the other hand, the curve can be more complex. For example, the gradient can in some cases rise sharply with increasing strain, due to the polymer chains becoming aligned as they reorganise during plastic deformation. This can lead to a stable neck. No effect of this type is possible in metals.

The figure shows a screenshot from an interactive simulation available on the DoITPoMS educational website. The construction is shown for a (true) stress-strain curve represented by a simple analytical expression (Ludwik-Hollomon).