In 2004, a team comprised of researchers and service providers launched the Safer Crack Use, Outreach, Research and Education (SCORE) project in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The project was aimed at developing a better understanding of the harms associated with crack cocaine smoking and determining the feasibility of introducing specific harm reduction strategie...

Maleic anhydride-modified polypropylene was compounded with commercially available surface-modified montmorillonite in a twin-screw extruder. Recompounding ensured the removal of visible tactoids from the extrudate but TEM and XRD techniques showed nonuniform dispersion of clay platelets. In this study, we investigated the mechanical and fracture properties of nanoclayfilled polypropylene. Emph...

The addition of liquid-filled urea-formaldehyde (UF) microcapsules to an epoxy matrix leads to significant reduction in fatigue crack growth rate and corresponding increase in fatigue life. Mode-I fatigue crack propagation is measured using a tapered doublecantilever beam (TDCB) specimen for a range of microcapsule concentrations and sizes: 0, 5, 10, and 20% by weight and 50, 180, and 460 lm di...

In this thesis an investigation and modelling of the fatigue crack propagation in the nickel based superalloy Inconel 718, with a special emphasis on the effect of hold times, is presented. The modelling work has been concentrated on describing the hold time fatigue crack propagation by using the concept of a damaged zone in front of the crack tip, which is believed to have a lowered resistance...

Bone fracture is a health concern for those with aged bone and brittle bone diseases. Mouse bone is widely used as a model of human bone, especially to investigate preclinical treatment strategies. However, little is known about the mechanisms of mouse bone fracture and its similarities and differences from fracture in human bone. In this work we present a methodology to investigate the fractur...

An understanding of how fatigue cracks grow in bone is of importance as fatigue is thought to be the main cause of clinical stress fractures. This study presents new results on the fatigue-crack growth behavior of small surface cracks (approximately 75-1000 microm in size) in human cortical bone, and compares their growth rates with data from other published studies on the behavior of both surf...

Ductile-brittle fracture transition was investigated using compact tension (CT) specimens from -70 o C to 40 o C for a carbon steel. Large deformation finite element analysis has been carried out to simulate the stable crack growth in the compact tension (CT, a/W=0.6), three point-point bend (SE(B), a/W=0.1) and centre-cracked tension (M(T), a/W=0.5) specimens. Experimental crack tip opening di...

Ambient-temperature fracture toughness and fatigue crack propagation behavior are investigated in a wide range of (g 1 a2) TiAl microstructures, including single-phase g, duplex, coarse lamellar (1 to 2 mm colony size (D) and 2.0 mm lamellar spacing (l)), fine lamellar (D ; 150 mm, l 5 1.3 to 2.0 mm), and a powder metallurgy (P/M) lamellar microstructure (D 5 65 mm, l 5 0.2 mm). The influences ...