Articular stress fracture arising from the distal end of the third metacarpal bone (MC3) is a common serious injury in Thoroughbred racehorses. Currently, there is no method for predicting fracture risk clinically. We describe an ex-vivo biomechanical model in which we measured subchondral crack micromotion under compressive loading that modeled high speed running. Using this model, we determin...

A nonuniform crack growth problem is considered for a homogeneous isotropic elastic medium subjected to the action of remote oscillatory and static loads. In the case of a plane problem, the former results in Rayleigh waves propagating toward the crack tip. For the antiplane problem the shear waves play a similar role. Under the considered conditions the crack cannot move uniformly, and if the ...

The filling of strand corrosion products during concrete crack propagation is investigated experimentally in the present paper. The effects of stirrups on the filling of corrosion products and concrete cracking are clarified. A prediction model of crack width is developed incorporating the filling proportion of corrosion products and the twisting shape of the strand. Experimental data on cracki...

Fatigue crack growth was investigated in a 001 1⁄2 oriented single crystal specimen, made of a Ni-based superalloy, Haynes 230. Crack propagation was characterized with digital image correlation: crack closure, measured by analyzing the relative displacements of crack flanks, showed closure levels much lower than polycrystal alloys. Reversed plastic zones were calculated from regressed stress i...

The mechanisms of fatigue-crack propagation in ceramics and intermetallics are examined through a comparison of cyclic crack-growth behavior in ductile and brittle materials. Crack growth is considered to be a mutual competition between intrinsic mechanisms of crack advance ahead of the crack tip, which promote crack growth, and extrinsic mechanisms of crack-tip shielding behind the tip, which ...

We have developed an experiment to study the propagation of laboratory synthesized fatigue cracks under various controlled conditions during Sonic IR inspection. The experiment provides for good repeatability in testing. The parameters of interest include the initial crack length, load history (stress intensity and load ratio) during crack generation, geometry of the crack, material and also th...

this study investigates propagation of mode i crack in b70 pre-stressed concrete sleepers by fracture mechanics approach. a new experimental analysis is done for notched b70 pre-stressed concrete sleepers with replica test and image analysis. a scanning electron microscope test (sem) and an image analysis are applied for the replica test in order to determine crack length and crack mouth openin...

In order to improve upon continuum models for understanding the origins of ductile versus brittle response in materials, an accurate assessment of the stress fields near a crack tip must be developed. Existing continuum models have considered the crack tip to be perfectly sharp in order to use convenient analytical solutions for the stress fields around the crack tip. Numerous experimental obse...

This paper presents a study of generalized enrichment functions for three-dimensional curved crack fronts. Two coordinate systems used in the definition of singular curved crack front enrichment functions are analyzed. In the first one, a set of Cartesian coordinate systems defined along the crack front is used. In the second case, the geometry of the crack front is approximated by a set of cur...

An extensive experimental study of indentation and crack arrest statistics is presented for four different brittle materials (alumina, silicon carbide, silicon nitride, glass). Evidence is given that the crack length statistics is described by a universal (i.e., material independent) distribution. The latter directly derives from results obtained when modeling crack propagation as a depinning p...