Flaws in material, appearing because of imperfections, manufacturing faults or severe service conditions, can easily threaten the structural integrity of engineering components. This is particularly dangerous when concerning equipment whose purpose is to protect larger systems, e.g. pressure safety valves (PSV) that protect pressure vessels and equipment of overpressure. Catastrophic consequenc...

The theory of critical distances (TCD) proposes that the failure of a body containing a stress concentration (e.g. a crack or notch) can be predicted using elastic stress information in a critical region close to the notch tip. This paper investigates the use of TCD for predicting brittle fracture. The critical region is defined in terms of a characteristic material length constant, L, which is...

Numerical methods such as boundary element and finite element methods are widely used for the stress analysis in solid mechanics. This study presents boundary element method based on the displacement discontinuity formulation to solve general problems of interaction between hydraulic fracturing and discontinuities. The crack tip element and a higher order boundary displacement collocation techn...

The mechanical strength of pharmaceutical compacts is an important in-process control parameter to ensure that tablets have sufficient strength to withstand handling during production, transport and use. The introduction of the “Brazilian test” into the pharmaceutical sciences by Fell and Newton has enabled a fundamental understanding of the stresses involved in the breaking of compacts and pro...

This paper investigates the fatigue behaviour of out-of-plane gusset welded joints strengthened with carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates. Two notches were introduced at the weld toes adjacent to longitudinal plate ends to simulate the initial damage. Variables including the stress range, singleor double-sided strengthening and modulus of CFRP materials were considered. It was found...

Abstract An influence of the bi-material interface between a steel substrate and thin protective layer applied through laser cladding was investigated. A range elastic properties thicknesses were considered to cover behaviour short crack in selected materials such as bronze, nickel or cobalt alloys. The special case terminating directly at investigated, which is connected necessity application ...

Finite Fracture Mechanics and Cohesive Crack Model can effectively predict the strength of plain, cracked or notched structural components, overcoming classical drawbacks Linear Elastic Mechanics. Aim present work is to investigate size effects by expressing each model as a unified system two equations, describing stress requirement energy balance, respectively. Brittle crack onset in different...