The behavior of cleavage crack fronts at grain boundaries in free-standing silicon thin films is investigated through a microtensile experiment. In addition to the crystallographic orientation, the orientation of grain boundary plane also plays a critical role. With respect to the initial crack surface, if the inclination angle is relatively small, the crack tends to penetrate across the bounda...

Cracking sounds emitted by coffee beans during the roasting process were recorded and analyzed to investigate the potential of using the sounds as the basis for an automated roast monitoring technique. Three parameters were found that could be exploited. Near the end of the roasting process, sounds known as "first crack" exhibit a higher acoustic amplitude than sounds emitted later, known as "s...

Using molecular dynamics with an accurate many-body potential for metallic Tantalum, we studied crack propagation in a pre-notched nano-slab under uniaxial strain in a [100] direction. We study dislocation emission from the crack tip for various strain rate and temperatures, focusing on the influence of the local temperature at the crack tip on the propagation of the crack. We find a close conn...

Symbolic Trajectory Evaluation (STE) is a formal verification technique for hardware. The current STE semantics is not faithful to the proving power of existing STE tools, which obscures the STE theory unnecessarily. In this paper, we present a new closure semantics for STE which does match the proving power of STE model-checkers, and makes STE easier to understand.

BACKGROUND While crack cocaine has been associated with elevated sexual risks and transmission of HIV/STIs, particularly in the context of street-based sex work, few empirical studies have examined correlates of direct sex-for-crack exchanges. This study longitudinally examined the correlates of sex-for-crack exchanges and associated effects on sexual risk outcomes among street-based female sex...

BACKGROUND Despite the multitude of public health and community harms associated with crack cocaine use, little is known about factors associated with smoking crack in public and related risks such as rushed public crack smoking. METHODS Data were derived from two prospective cohort studies of people who use illicit drugs in Vancouver, Canada between 2010 and 2014. Multivariable generalized e...

In this paper an exact formulation of the plane elasticity problem for a hollow cylinder or a disk containing a radial crack is given. The crack may be an external edge crack, an internal edge crack, or an embedded crack. It is assumed that on the crack surfaces the shear traction is zero and the normal traction is an arbitrary function of r. For various crack geometries and radius ratios, the ...

BACKGROUND Slow crack growth can be described in a v (crack velocity) versus KI (stress intensity factor) diagram. Slow crack growth in ceramics is attributed to corrosion assisted stress at the crack tip or at any pre-existing defect in the ceramic. The combined effect of high stresses at the crack tip and the presence of water or body fluid molecules (reducing surface energy at the crack tip)...

This paper aims to discuss the requirements of safe and smooth trajectory planning of transporter mobile robots to perform non-prehensile object manipulation task. In non-prehensile approach, the robot and the object must keep their grasp-less contact during manipulation task. To this end, dynamic grasp concept is employed for a box manipulation task and corresponding conditions are obtained an...

Effect of Cracks on Elastic Properties of Low Porosity Rocks by Terrence Patrick Todd Submitted to the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences on May 1, 1973, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Microcracks in terrestrial and lunar rocks significantly alter elastic, thermal, and mechanical properties. The degree to which microcracks alter physica...