For the past decades researchers are showing immense interest to investigate the natural advantage of preparation of composites from minerals such as bauxite particles, and proved their effectiveness as cost effective reinforcing agents in fabrication of high performance composites. This study, is a new attempt in using the Iraqi natural bauxite powder with different proportions (2wt%, 4wt%, an...

We propose a versatile approach to computing the effective toughness of heterogeneous media. This approach focusses on the material property independent of the details of the boundary condition. The key idea is what we call a surfing boundary condition, where a steadily propagating crack opening displacement is applied as a boundary condition to a large domain while the crack set is allowed to ...

For the first time, repeatable self-healing was achieved in a cross-linked epoxy polymer by incorporating 2-ethyl-4-methylimidazole (24-EMI) into the matrix as a latent polymerization initiator. Upon material damage and infiltration of liquid EPON 8132 epoxy monomer healing agent into the crack plane, polymerization occurs in the damaged region with a moderate application of heat in the presenc...

The intergranular crack propagation of the lamellar structure β titanium alloys is investigated by using a modified Gurson-type damage model. The representative microstructure of the lamellar alloy, which consists of the soft α phase layer surrounding the hard grain interiors, is generated based on an advanced Voronoi algorithm. Both the normal fracture due to void growth and the shear fracture...

This paper reports results of in-house experimentation on heat treatment and mechanical testing of H13 tool steel. Heat treatment strategy practiced by the industry is described in detail. Effect of various types of heat treatment on fracture toughness, hardness and other mechanical properties is also analyzed. It was found that toughness (expressed in terms of plane-strain fracture toughness K...

Mechanisms influencing the plane-strain fracture toughness behavior of commercial aluminum-lithium alloys at cryogenic temperatures are investigated as a function of microstructure and plate orientation. It is confirmed that certain alloys show a marked increase in tensile ductility and toughness with decrease in temperature, although such behavior is not found in the short-transverse orientati...