In order to improve upon continuum models for understanding the origins of ductile versus brittle response in materials, an accurate assessment of the stress fields near a crack tip must be developed. Existing continuum models have considered the crack tip to be perfectly sharp in order to use convenient analytical solutions for the stress fields around the crack tip. Numerous experimental obse...

This paper presents a study of generalized enrichment functions for three-dimensional curved crack fronts. Two coordinate systems used in the definition of singular curved crack front enrichment functions are analyzed. In the first one, a set of Cartesian coordinate systems defined along the crack front is used. In the second case, the geometry of the crack front is approximated by a set of cur...

An extensive experimental study of indentation and crack arrest statistics is presented for four different brittle materials (alumina, silicon carbide, silicon nitride, glass). Evidence is given that the crack length statistics is described by a universal (i.e., material independent) distribution. The latter directly derives from results obtained when modeling crack propagation as a depinning p...

The cracked Brazilian disc (CBD) specimen is widely used in order to determine mode-I/II and mixed-mode fracture toughness of a rock medium. In this study, the stress intensity factor (SIF) on the crack-tip in this specimen is calculated for various geometrical crack conditions using the extended-finite element method (X-FEM). This method is based upon the finite element method (FEM). In this m...

The fracture of restored teeth is a significant obstacle to lifelong oral health. Recent studies suggest that fatigue cracks originate at flaws introduced during cavity preparation and that fatigue crack growth is a principle cause of restored tooth fractures. In this study, the rate of fatigue crack growth in bovine dentin was estimated under mode I cyclic loading. Double cantilever beam (DCB)...

Transient mixed-mode elastodynamic crack growth along arbitrary smoothly varying paths is considered. Asymptotically, the crack tip stress field is square root singular with the angular variation of the singular term depending weakly on the instantaneous values of the crack tip speed and on the mode-I and mode-II stress intensity factors. However, for a material particle at a small distance awa...

The saturation-strip model for piezoelectric crack is re-examined in a permeable environment to analyze fracture toughness of a piezoelectric ceramic. In this study, a permeable crack is modeled as a vanishing thin but finite rectangular slit with surface charge deposited along crack surfaces. This permeable saturation crack model reveals that there exists a possible leaky mode for electrical f...

Crack is one of the most typical damage types in engineering structures, and therefore is a research focus in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM). The monitoring and evaluation methods for crack-type damage are studied using a Lamb wave-based RAPID algorithm (Reconstruction Algorithm for the Probabilistic Inspection of Damage) in this study, which is based on a correlation analysis....

Fretting fatigue experiments and finite element analysis were carried out to investigate the influence of cylindrical-on-flat contact on crack nucleation, crack path and fatigue life of medium-carbon steel. The location of crack nucleation was predicted using the maximum shear stress range criterion and the maximum relative slip amplitude criterion. The prediction using the maximum relative sli...

Metal owns the ability of self-healing to some extent, and the ability of the internal crack healing is most desirable for improving the reliability of metal. A molecular dynamics simulation has been further developed to investigate the evolution of a nanoscale crack in body centred cubic Fe crystal under the conditions of heating or compressive pressure. When system temperature drops, the evol...