The present paper is concerned with the application of a “plasticity-induced” crack closure model to study fatigue crack growth under various load histories. The model was based on the Dugdale model but modified to leave plastically deformed material in the wake of the advancing crack. The model was used to correlate crack growth rates under constant-amplitude loading and then used to predict c...

Fatigue failure of strucutres is normally caused by cracks that extend beyond a safe size. Flaws are present to some extend in all structural parts, either as a result of manufacturing fabrication defects or damage in service. Crack growth is a complex phenomenon to model and simplifications are assumed. In recent years, there has been an increasing realisation that advanced computational metho...

X. Zhao and co-workers develop on page 4035 a new biocompatible hydrogel system that is extremely tough and stretchable and can be 3D printed into complex structures, such as the multilayer mesh shown. Cells encapsulated in the tough and printable hydrogel maintain high viability. 3D-printed structures of the tough hydrogel can sustain high mechanical loads and deformations.

This paper deals with the implementation of an efficient Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) formulation for the three dimensional finite element modeling of mode I self-similar dynamic fracture process. Contrary to the remeshing technique, the presented algorithm can continuously advance the crack with the one mesh topology. The uncoupled approach is employed to treat the equations. So, each t...