The life of a structure can be extended by early detection of cracks with appropriate repairs. In reality, structural failure is always accompanied by the formation of cracks and early detection of cracks is essential in extending structure life and preventing structural failure(1). Therefore, there is a huge amount of research on monitoring surface crack development in concrete structures, esp...

The density of soil seed banks is normally highest at the soil surface and declines monotonically with depth. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, peak density occurs below the surface but, except in severely disturbed soils, it is generally true that deeper seeds are older. In seasonally dry habitats that develop deep soil cracks during the dry season, it is possible that some seeds fall down ...

UNLABELLED Cracking of tooth structure is a frequent mechanism of clinical failure necessitating treatment. Some laser conditions, particularly those without sufficient water cooling, may cause surface cracking of dentin. Surface cracks may serve as initiation sites for the onset of catastrophic fracture under mechanical stress, resulting in failure of the dentin. In this study, the hypothesis ...

Serial mechanical sectioning and high resolution X-ray tomography have been used to study the three-dimensional morphology of small fatigue cracks growing in a 12 Cr tempered martensitic steam turbine blade material. A range of surface conditions has been studied, namely polished and shot peened (with varying levels of intensity). In the polished (unpeened) condition, inclusions (alumina and ma...

A premature failure mode in steel rolling element bearings called white structure flaking (WSF) occurs in wind turbine gearbox bearings. WSF can occur in as little as 6-24 months of operation. WSF is associated with microstructural alterations called white etching area (WEA) and white etching cracks (WECs) that form in the ~1 mm zone beneath the contact surface. The tribological drivers for WSF...

As shown in an earlier work, the FEM-BEM alternating method is an efficient and accurate method for fracture analysis. In the present paper, a further improvement is formulated and implemented for the analyses of three-dimensional arbitrary surface cracks by modeling the cracks in a local finite-sized subdomain using the symmetric Galerkin boundary element method (SGBEM). The finite element met...

This paper investigates the efficiency of Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) method in detecting cracks and flaws inside the concrete. A series of concrete beams and slab specimens were cast and damaged to simulate the different mechanisms possible in a reinforced concrete deck due to mechanical loading. Two types of simulated cracks, namely, cracks perpendicular and cracks parallel to axis of bea...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the generation of enamel cracks and gaps at the cavosurface margin of resin composite restorations using various burs. Saucer-shaped cavities with a bevel were prepared on mid-coronal buccal or lingual surfaces of extracted human molars using a regular-grit round diamond bur, a fine-grit diamond bur, a superfine-grit diamond bur or a six-bladed tungsten...