An assessment of the effects of microstructure on room temperature fatigue threshold and crack propagation behaviour has been carried out on microstructural variants of U720Li, i.e. as-received U720Li, U720Li-LG (large grain variant) and U720Li-LP (large intragranular coherent γ′ variant). Fatigue tests were carried out at room temperature using a 20Hz sinusoidal cycling waveform at an Rratio=0...

Mineralized tissues, such as bone and tooth dentin, serve as structural materials in the human body and, as such, have evolved to resist fracture. In assessing their quantitative fracture resistance or toughness, it is important to distinguish between intrinsic toughening mechanisms, which function ahead of the crack tip, such as plasticity in metals, and extrinsic mechanisms, which function pr...

This article presents a study of fatigue-crack propagation behavior in Nitinol, a 50Ni-50Ti (at. pct) superelastic/shape-memory alloy, with particular emphasis on the effect of the stress-induced martensitic transformation on crack-growth resistance. Specifically, fatigue-crack growth was characterized in stable austenite (at 120 8C), superelastic austenite (at 37 8C), and martensite (at 265 8C...

The role of prism decussation on the crack growth resistance of human enamel is evaluated. Miniature inset compact tension (CT) specimens embodying a section of cuspal enamel were subjected to Mode I cyclic or monotonic loads. Cracks were grown in either the forward (from outer enamel inwards) or reverse (from inner enamel outwards) direction and the responses were compared quantitatively. Resu...

Alumina-zirconia nano-composites were recently developed as alternative bearing materials for orthopedics. Previous, preliminary reports show that such alumina-zirconia nanocomposites exhibit high crack resistance and low wear rate. In this paper, additional information is given in terms of wear, crack resistance and ageing behaviour: femoral heads are inspected after 7 million cycles of wear t...

ÐThe high-temperature fatigue-crack propagation and fracture resistance of a model g-TiAl intermetallic composite reinforced with 20 vol.% ductile b-TiNb particles is examined at elevated temperatures of 650 and 8008C and compared with behavior at room temperature. TiNb reinforcements are found to enhance the fracture toughness of g-TiAl, even at high temperatures, from about 12 to 040 MPa m, a...

Large deformation finite element analysis has been carried out to investigate the stress-strain fields ahead of a growing crack for compact tension (a/W=0.5) and three-point bend (a/W=0.1 and 0.5) specimens under plane stress condition. The crack growth is controlled by the experimental J-integral resistance curves measured by Sun et al. The results indicate that the distributions of opening st...

Fracture toughness, critical strain energy release rate and critical stress intensity factor were determined for lathe-cut, spherical, admixed, and two atomized high-copper dental amalgams. At a loading rate of 0.005cm min -1 for 24-hour samples, the spherical amalgam had the highest resistance to unstable crack propagation. At a loading rate of 0.05 cm min -1 for both 24-hour and one-month sam...

Cracks and craze lines are often observed in the enamel of human teeth, but they rarely cause tooth fracture. The present study evaluates fatigue crack growth in human enamel, and compares that to the fatigue response of sintered hydroxyapatite (HAp) with similar crystallinity, chemistry and density. Miniature inset compact tension (CT) specimens were prepared that embodied a small piece of ena...

An assessment of the effects of microstructure on room temperature fatigue crack initiation and short crack propagation in a Ni-base superalloy is presented. The assessment was carried out on microstructural variants of U720Li, including as-received U720Li, U720Li-LG (large grain variant) and U720Li-LP (large intragranular coherent γ′ variant). Fatigue tests were carried out at room temperature...