Elastic Limit  
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The elastic limit is the largest stress that a material can withstand without any measurable permanent strain remaining after complete release of the stress.

The procedure required to determine the elastic limit involves cycles of loading and unloading, each time incrementally increasing the applied stress.

Eventually, a stress will be reached such that not all of the strain will be recovered during unloading. This stress is the elastic limit.

The graph plots stress versus strain. A curve starts from the bottom left of the viewing window at the origin, goes up and to the right with decreasing steepness and exits the top center of the viewing window at a point marked elastic limit. A straight line is drawn starting slightly to the left of the bottom center of the viewing window and ending on the curve at the top center of the viewing window. A caption on the bottom right of the graph reads: finished.