Fatigue crack growth can be strongly influenced by crack closure, i. e., the contacting of the opposing faces of a fatigue crack above the minimum load in a loading cycle. This crack closure shields the crack tip from the full stress field, but different views are held regarding the extent of this shielding. The type of closure, whether it be plasticity-induced, or roughness-induced may also pl...

In previous studies, enamel showed indications to occlude small cracks in-vivo and exhibited R-curve behaviors for bigger cracks ex-vivo. This study quantifies the crack tip's toughness (K(I0),K(III0)), the crack's closure stress and the cohesive zone size at the crack tip of enamel and investigates the toughening mechanisms near the crack tip down to the length scale of a single enamel crystal...

16 This paper presents a novel large-area strain sensing technology for monitoring fatigue cracks in 17 steel bridges. The technology is based on a soft elastomeric capacitor (SEC), which serves as a 18 flexible and large-area strain gauge. Previous experiments have verified the SEC’s capability to 19 monitor low-cycle fatigue cracks experiencing large plastic deformation and large crack openin...

Traction-separation relations have been used to represent the adhesive interactions at bimaterial interfaces for contact and fracture analyses. There are a variety of methods for determining these relations, which are broadly sorted into iterative and direct methods.Herewe compare the traction-separation relations for a silicon/epoxy interface extracted by two such methods. Interferometric meas...