This paper presents a systematical computational study of the effect of microstructures of materials reinforced with brittle hard particles on their fracture behavior and toughness. Crack growth in particle-reinforced materials (here, in high speed steels) with various artificially designed arrangements of brittle inclusions is simulated using microstructure-based finite element meshes and an e...

Mechanical degradation and resultant capacity fade in high-capacity electrode materials critically hinder their use in high-performance rechargeable batteries. Despite tremendous efforts devoted to the study of the electro-chemo-mechanical behaviours of high-capacity electrode materials, their fracture properties and mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here we report a nanomechanical study on th...

Out-of-plane, nanoscale periodic corrugations are observed in the dynamic fracture surface of brittle bulk metallic glasses with fracture toughness approaching that of silica glasses. A model based on the meniscus instability and plastic zone theory is used to explain such dynamic crack instability. The results indicate that the local softening mechanism in the fracture is an essential ingredie...

INVESTIGATION OF THE FRACTURE PHENOMENA DURING THE MILLING PROCESS OF INORGANIC PARTICULATES AND BRITTLE FRACTURE OF POLYMER COMPOSITES USING FRACTAL THEORY

Stress fractures, a painful injury, are caused by excessive fatigue in bone. This study on damage accumulation in bone sought to determine if the Palmgren-Miner rule (PMR), a well-known linear damage accumulation hypothesis, is predictive of fatigue failure in bone. An electromagnetic shaker apparatus was constructed to conduct cyclic and variable amplitude tests on bovine bone specimens. Three...

The experimentally determined marked rise of the stress intensity factor required to initiate crack propagation in brittle solids under variably high loading rates, is analyzed. This problem of fracture initiation at the tip of a crack is considered in terms of activating a flaw at some distance away from the tip. By using a semi-infinite crack in an unbounded two-dimensional solid subjected to...

Owing to a lack of microstructure, glassy materials are inherently strong but brittle, and often demonstrate extreme sensitivity to flaws. Accordingly, their macroscopic failure is often not initiated by plastic yielding, and almost always terminated by brittle fracture. Unlike conventional brittle glasses, metallic glasses are generally capable of limited plastic yielding by shear-band sliding...

The experiments on dynamic crack propagation in PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) and in soda lime glass conducted by Fineberg and Sharon (see [1-2] and quoted references) during the last decade pointed out some characteristic features of the microbranching instability in brittle materials. They observed the existence of a critical velocity for the onset of the microbranching; described the relati...