Abstract—The present study investigates the effect of inclusions on the shape and size of crack tip plastic zones in engineering materials subjected to static loads by employing the element free Galerkin method (EFGM). The modeling of the discontinuities produced by cracks and inclusions becomes independent of the grid chosen for analysis. The standard displacement approximation is modified by ...

Cocaine and its alkaloid free base "crack-cocaine" have long since been substances of abuse. Drug abuse of cocaine via oral, inhalation, intravenous, and intranasal intake has famously been associated with a number of medical complications. Intestinal ischemia and perforation remain the most common manifestations of cocaine associated gastrointestinal disease and have historically been associat...

The paper reviews the potential of the ultrasonic small incidence method of testing, which enables us to characterize smaller tight cracks quantitatively under load-free conditions. Recently, an important characteristic of the method of being capable of evaluating the cracks from both the accessible and inaccessible sides of material structures with almost similar level of sensitivity, has been...

The fatigue growth of a fiber reinforced composite laminate was characterized under thermal cycling using a combined experimental and computational investigation. Twenty-four ply composite laminates (1⁄20 12=90 12 ) are fabricated with a pre-existing delamination, and subjected to thermal cycling in an environmental chamber. The large mismatch in the coefficients of thermal expansion is used to...

In this work we obtained microporous and mesoporous silica gels by sol-gel processing. Tetraethylortosilicate (TEOS) was used as precursor. Nitric acid and hydrofluoric acid were used as catalysts. In order to study the affect of formamide as drying additive, we used a molar ratio alkoxide/formamide of 1/1. The performance of formamide in obtaining crack-free gels was evaluated through monolith...

An efastic half-plane containing a su~ace-b~ak~og crack normal to the free surface, subjected to loading by uniform tractions over a given length af its surface, is considered. The tractions consist of pressure, constant in time, and a shear load, varying sinu~idaily in time, both applied adjacent to the crack. This geometry approximates the classical fretting problem with a resulting fatigue c...

A novel method for preparing and testing bending specimens in-situ the TEM has been developed. This method provides high visibility of the crack front and its associated plastic zone. This is significant because energy release rates can now be calculated at many points throughout the test based on crack tip opening displacement (CTOD), crack opening angle (COA), and crack advance. Further refin...

A thorough examination of the quasi-static penetration of a floating elastic-brittle plate via a fracture mechanics approach has been presented by Bažant and Kim. Bažant and Kim reach the conclusion that there is a size effect (in terms of the plate thickness, h). A few of the assumptions made by these authors will be examined in this discussion. The formulation presented by Bažant and Kim assu...