The corrosion fatigue crack growth characteristics of small (>35pm) surface and corner cracks in aluminum alloy 7075 is established. The early stage of crack growth is studied by performing in situ long focal length microscope (500X) crack length measurements in laboratory air and 1% NaCl environments. To quantify the “small crack effect” in the corrosive environment, the corrosion fatigue crac...

Interfacial fracture toughness and cyclic fatigue-crack growth properties of joints made from 99.5% pure alumina partially transient liquid-phase bonded using copper/niobium/copper interlayers have been investigated at both room and elevated temperatures, and assessed in terms of interfacial chemistry and microstructure. The mean interfacial fracture toughness, Gc, was found to decrease from 39...

The mechanisms of fatigue-crack propagation are examined with particular emphasis on the similarities and differences between cyclic crack growth in ductile materials, such as metals, and corresponding behavior in brittle materials, such as intermetallics and ceramics. This is achieved by considering the process of fatiguecrack growth as a mutual competition between intrinsic mechanisms of crac...

In order to monitor the crack tip propagation of aluminum alloy, this study investigates the variation of the spectrum characteristics of a fiber Bragg grating (FBG), combined with an analysis of the spectrum simulation. The results identify the location of the subordinate peak as significantly associated with the strain distribution along the grating, corresponding to the different plastic zon...

A traction-displacement relationship that may be embedded into a cohesive zone model for microscale problems of intergranular fracture is extracted from atomistic molecular-dynamics simulations. A molecular-dynamics model for crack propagation under steady-state conditions is developed to analyze intergranular fracture along a flat Σ99 [1 1 0] symmetric tilt grain boundary in aluminum. Under hy...

The phenomenon of fatigue in gears at the tooth root can be a cause of catastrophic failure if not detected in time. Where traditional low-frequency vibration may help in detecting a well-developed crack or a completely failed tooth, a system for early detection of the nucleation and initial propagation of a fatigue crack can be of great use in condition monitoring. Acoustic emission is a poten...

We have performed atomic simulations of crack propagation along a weak interface joining two harmonic crystals. The simulations show that a mode II shear dominated crack can accelerate to the Rayleigh wave speed and then nucleate an intersonic daughter that travels at the longitudinal wave speed. This contradicts the general belief that a crack can travel no faster than the Rayleigh speed.

The characterization of critical levels of microstructural damage that can lead to fatigue-crack propagation under high-cycle fatigue loading conditions is a major concern for the aircraft industry with respect to the structural integrity of turbine engine components. The extremely high cyclic frequencies characteristic of in-flight loading spectra necessitate that a damage-tolerant design appr...

In the lattice structure considered here, crack propagation is caused by feeding waves, carrying energy to the crack front, and accompanied by dissipative waves carrying a part of this energy away from the front (the di4erence is spent on the bond disintegration). The feeding waves di4er by their wavenumber. A zero feeding wavenumber corresponds to a macrolevel-associated solution with the clas...

Reinforced concrete is a composite material consisting in a rebar embedded in a concrete matrix. The structural equilibrium depends of the quality of bond between the two materials as well as the intrinsic quality of each of the components. When the structure is submitted to heating, cracking can occur due to the difference in thermal expansion properties between the two materials. In the prese...