Plastic deformation in brittle and ductile fracture

Rotations of brittle particles during plastic deformation of ductile alloys

Experimental evidence is presented to show that significant rotations of brittle phase inclusions of a Fe-rich intermetallic phase occur during plastic deformation on an Al Mg Si base wrought aluminum alloy. The particle rotations are quantitatively characterized, for uniaxial tension, compression, torsion, and notch-tension test specimens strained to different strain levels. The particle rotat...

Engineering ductile fracture in brittle-matrix composites

This letter describes a newly discovered phenomenon: ductile fracture in cementitious materials. The brittle nature of materials such as concrete and ceramics has prompted the development of various approaches to enhance their fracture toughness. Fibre reinforcement has been the common focus in the toughening of the brittle materials. Two types of fracture have been observed to date in cementit...

Deformation of brittle-ductile thrust wedges in experiments and nature

[1] Even though the rheology of thrust wedges is mostly frictional, a basal ductile decollement is often involved. By comparison with purely frictional wedges, such brittleductile wedges generally display anomalous structures such as backward vergence, widely spaced thrust units, and nonfrontward sequences of thrust development. Laboratory experiments are used here to study the deformation of b...

From brittle to ductile fracture in disordered materials.

We introduce a lattice model able to describe damage and yielding in heterogeneous materials ranging from brittle to ductile ones. Ductile fracture surfaces, obtained when the system breaks once the strain is completely localized, are shown to correspond to minimum energy surfaces. The similarity of the resulting fracture paths to the limits of brittle fracture or minimum energy surfaces is qua...

A Fracture Model Applied to the Ductile/Brittle Regime