Discontinuously reinforced aluminum metal matrix composites (MMCs) with about 20 vol.% reinforcement produced by powder metallurgy (PM) are attractive for many structural applications because of their high specific strength and stiffness. While they exhibit reduced ductility and toughness at room temperature, many of them can be superplastically deformed at high-strain rates in the vicinity of ...

The TWIP steels show high strain hardening rates with high ductility which results in high ultimate tensile strength. This makes their processing by equal channel angular pressing very difficult. Up to now, this has only been achieved at warm temperatures (above 200 C). In this paper, a FeMnCAl TWIP steel has been processed at room temperature and the resulted microstructure and mechanical prop...

Braced piers of steel truss bridges having braces with latticed built-up cross-sections may su er significant damage during earthquakes due to the buckling, rapid strength degradation, and fracture of the braces. One retro t alternative for such a bridge pier is to supplement the existing structural system with a system of energy dissipation devices (or structural fuses) that will yield and dis...

Polysynthetically-twinned titanium aluminide (PST-TiAl), a fully lamellar γ-TiAl+α2Ti3Al dual-phase alloy, is under evaluation for applications in rotary components in aircraft and automobile industries due to its high specific strength, and a high strength-retention capability at elevated-temperatures. However, the low ductility at roomto mid-high temperatures of the material hinders its appli...

Mixed-surface octyl/methoxyundecyl a-zirconium phosphonates (ZrPs) were investigated as distributed nanoscale fillers, in concentrations up to 50% w/w, for the purpose of increasing the elastic modulus and yield strength of polycaprolactone (PCL) without a meaningful reduction of its ductility. The volumetric nanoparticle loadings were estimated to be over 70% higher than those in nanocomposite...

Many natural structures use a foam core and solid outer shell to achieve high strength and stiffness with relatively small amounts of mass. Biological foams, however, must also resist crack growth. The process of crack propagation within the struts of a foam is not well understood and is complicated by the foam microstructure. We demonstrate that in cancellous bone, the foam-like component of w...

The lack of durability in concrete repairs induces repair failures in field and endless “repair of repairs”. Most often drying shrinkage of “new” repair material restrained by “old” concrete substrate causes cracking in the repair material, combined with interface delamination between the repair and the concrete substrate, which may also introduce chlorides, oxygen, moisture, alkali or sulphate...

In this paper, the effective parameters on the ductility demand of the seismically base isolated structure are investigated, and then a relation between the strength reduction factor and the target ductility is presented. The investigation has been conducted by modelling the base isolated structure as a two degree of freedom model in the OpenSees software, and the possibility of yielding in the...

Al-Si-based casting alloys have a great potential in various industrial applications. Common strengthening strategies on these alloys are accompanied inevitably by sacrifice of ductility, known as strength-ductility trade-off dilemma. Here, we report a simple route by combining rapid solidification (RS) with a post-solidification heat treatment (PHT), i.e. a RS + PHT route, to break through thi...

Recently, steel fibre reinforced polymers (SFRP) sheets have been introduced for the repair and rehabilitation of concrete structures. Few researchers studied the behaviour of the concrete columns wrapped with SFRP sheets; however, several critical parameters such as the cost and ductility effectiveness of the SFRP wrapped concrete columns have been lightly addressed. Thus, the main objective o...