The fracture toughness of three new compositional variants of the Zr-Ti-Be-LTM (Late Transition Metal) family of bulk metallic glasses (BMG’s) are studied in the as-cast and annealed condition. Quaternary Zr-Ti-Cu-Be alloys consistently had linear elastic fracture toughness values greater than 80 MPa·m, while Vitreloy 1, a Zr-Ti-Cu-Ni-Be alloy, had an average fracture toughness of 48.5 MPa·m wi...

[1] Sandpile avalanches were used first to illustrate the concept of self-organized criticality (SOC). Snow avalanches consist of two types: (1) loose snow avalanches which release in cohesionless material at the top of the snowpack and (2) slab avalanches which release by propagation of shear fractures originating in a thin weak layer at depth in the snowpack. Loose snow avalanches are analogo...

This study of two lemur species (Lemur catta and Propithecus v. verreauxi) in Madagascar combines observations of food procurement and initial food placement in the mouth with comparisons to food toughness and external properties. Food toughness was hypothesized to play a decisive role in determining food placement during ingestion. It was found that tougher foods are generally ingested on the ...

the basic trait in the ceramics is their high brittle or low fracture toughness, and the main criteria in the design and application is specifying the fracture toughness in ceramics. in this paper, a new method is proposed to determine the fracture toughness of ceramics, which is enhanced in lowering the cost of fracture toughness determination relative to the previous methods. hence due to the...

A sound knowledge of mechanical properties of rocks at high temperatures and pressures is essential for modelling volcanological problems such as fracture of lava flows and dike emplacement. In particular, fracture toughness is a scale invariant material property of a rock that describes its resistance to tensile failure. A new fracture mechanics apparatus has been constructed enabling fracture...

Fracture toughness (K1C) of medium carbon steel (0.5% C) has been determined by round notched tensile specimen. Two notch diameters (5.6mm and 4.2mm) and three notch angles (α) namely 45, 60 and 75 have been used to observe the effect of notch diameters and notch angle on fracture toughness of the steel. By heat treatment the microstructure of the steel is also varied and its effect on the frac...

The toughness of a (non-complete) graph G is the minimum value of t for which there is a vertex cut A whose removal yields |A|/t components. Determining toughness is an NP-hard problem for general input graphs. The toughness conjecture of Chvátal, which states that there exists a constant t such that every graph on at least 3 vertices with toughness at least t is hamiltonian, is still open for ...

Mental toughness in endurance athletes, while an important factor for success, has been scarcely studied. An online survey was used to examine eight mental toughness factors in endurance athletes. The study aim was to determine mental toughness profiles via latent profile analysis in endurance athletes and whether associations exist between the latent profiles and demographics and sports charac...

Highly mineralized natural materials such as teeth or mollusk shells boast unusual combinations of stiffness, strength and toughness currently unmatched by engineering materials. While high mineral contents provide stiffness and hardness, these materials also contain weaker interfaces with intricate architectures, which can channel propagating cracks into toughening configurations. Here we repo...