Question

When a load is reversed can the compressive force become tensile force?

Answer 1

Stress is really a tensor, so you can’t talk about its direction the way you can with a force. In simplified geometries, such as a rod being stretched, then we often treat the stress as being a scalar. You can’t talk about the direction of a scalar either. Since it’s a scalar, we can define whether we consider tension to be positive or negative. But that’s just a convention. There is no intrinsic reason to go one way or the other. According to this website Compressive stress