A final report submitted to the Infrastructure Technology Institute DISCLAIMER: The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors, who are responsible for the facts and accuracy of the information presented herein. This Document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the Synopsis: There have been numerous studies that have aimed at improving the low tensile strength, stiffness, and...

A study is made of median crack evolution in brittle coatings subjected to sharp contacts. A model bilayer system consisting of a glass plate bonded to a polycarbonate base, with a Vickers pyramid as indenter, is used to demonstrate the evolution in situ. The cracks undergo a phase of stable downward growth with increasing load. Beyond the coating mid-plane, flexural stresses (coupled with the ...

We developed a novel thermal spraying technology for a silver-containing hydroxyapatite (Ag-HA) coating with antibacterial activity to reduce the incidence of implant-associated infections. In this study, we determined the concentration of Ag ions that show antibacterial activity in fetal bovine serum (FBS) and antibacterial activity of the Ag-HA coating in FBS. The minimum inhibitory concentra...

A crack trapping model is developed for the fracture resistance of high-angle grain boundaries in free-standing brittle thin films, based on which a new size effect is predicted. In addition to the crystallographic misorientations, the grain boundary toughness is also dependent on the film thickness, primarily due to the geometrically necessary crack front branching. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All righ...

Almost all of the research on cracks in laser cladding is based, at present, a horizontal substrate, which cannot be directly applied to prepare high performance coatings, especially hardness tilted substrate. In this work, influence substrate’s tilt angle crack behavior Ni60A coating studied, based intensity distribution and energy attenuation models Results show that cracking rate (the number...

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...

Thermal noise in mirror optical coatings may not only limit the sensitivity of future gravitational-wave detectors in their most sensitive frequency band but is also a major impediment for experiments that aim to reach the standard quantum limit or cool mechanical systems to their quantum ground state. We present the design and experimental characterization of a highly reflecting mirror without...

that varies with distance, r, from the crack tip as r 1 2 . In this paper, a traction free plane stress wedge with a discrete cohesive zone along the intended crack-path is studied. Of interest is the in uence of the cohesive zone on the crack tip stress eld. Further, the in uence of the cohesive zone on the strain energy release rate is also investigated. Two example problems are studied; a do...

Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) films are widely used as transparent electrodes in electronic displays and solar cells. However, the small fracture strain of brittle ITO films poses significant challenge to their applications in flexible electronics devices that often undergo large deformation. Inspired by recent development of inorganic/organic hybrid permeation barriers for flexible electronics, we de...