Recently, a new generation of titanium aluminide alloy named Gamma-Met PX (GKSS, Geesthacht, Germany) has been developed with better rolling and postrolling characteristics. Previous work on this alloy has shown the material to have higher strengths at room and elevated temperatures when compared with other gamma titanium aluminides. In particular, this new alloy has shown increased ductility a...

The risk of bone fracture increases with age because of a variety of factors that include, among others, decreasing bone quantity and quality. Despite recent advances, the roles of bone microstructure and trace mineralization in the fracture process are not well understood. In this study, we utilize a combination of in-situ fracture toughness testing, digital strain mapping, and X-ray photoelec...

The J-based fracture testing technique is newly extended to experimentally determine the tension-softening (a-6) relations in ceramic-matrix composites. The J-based technique originally proposed for concrete has been well established for quasi-brittle materials where the fracture process is primarily dominated by the formation of a fracture process zone and the contribution of the crack tip tou...

The fracture toughness is a critical material property that determines engineering performance. However, as is well known for crystalline materials, if certain sample geometry and size requirements are not met, test results become sample-size dependent and difficult to compare between different studies. Here, the room-temperature fracture toughness of the Zr-based bulk metallic glass (BMG) Zr52...

The structural reliability of many brittle materials such as structural ceramics relies on the occurrence of intergranular, as opposed to transgranular, fracture in order to induce toughening by grain bridging. For a constant grain boundary strength and grain boundary toughness, the current work examines the role of grain strength, grain toughness, and grain angle in promoting intergranular fra...

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM The fabrication of zirconium dioxide (ZrO2) dental prosthetic substructures requires an extended sintering process (8 to 10 hours) in a conventional oven. Microwave sintering is a shorter process (2 hours) than conventional sintering. PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to compare the fracture toughness of 3 mol % Y2O3-stabilized ZrO2 sintered in a conventional or micro...

The indentation method has been widely used to measure the fracture toughness in fragile materials due to its simplicity and that only needs of a small sample. However, it is well known that the fracture toughness values obtained by indentation methods can be substantially different from the values obtained from more rigorous methods which are based on a precise knowledge of all parameters invo...

The effect of coherency WC/Co phase boundaries on the fracture toughness of the nanocrystalline WC-Co cemented carbides is studied by MD simulation method. The simulation results show that the nanocrystalline WC-Co cemented carbides with coherency WC/Co phase boundaries has higher fracture toughness than that without coherency WC/Co phase boundaries. Moreover, the mechanism of why coherency WC/...

The anisotropy of fracture toughness in AA2139 (Al-Cu-Mg) alloy sheet has been investigated via synchrotron radiation computed tomography of arrested cracks in Kahn tear test pieces for different loading cases. The three dimensional distribution and morphology of pores and defects in the as-received state are seen to be anisotropic, with chains of voids and void elongation in the L (longitudina...

The fracture behaviour of polymers is strongly affected by the addition of rigid particles. Several features of the particles have a decisive influence on the values of the fracture toughness: shape and size, chemical nature, surface nature, concentration by volume, and orientation. Among those of thermoplastic matrix, polypropylene (PP) composites are the most industrially employed for many di...