It is usually assumed that ‘fire hardening’ the tips of spears, as practised by hunter–gatherers and early Homo spp., makes them harder and better suited for hunting. This suggestion was tested by subjecting coppiced poles of hazel to a fire-hardening process and comparing their mechanical properties to those of naturally seasoned poles. A Shore D hardness test showed that fire treatment slight...

The "hardening hypothesis" suggests that as smoking prevalence decreases, lighter smokers will quit first, leaving more "hardcore" smokers in the population. At a population level, however, the weight of evidence suggests that no hardening is occurring. By understanding the lessons from Geoffrey Rose's model of population-level risk factor change, we argue that the hardening of the smoking popu...

Wireless-controlled robots, cars and other critical applications are in need of technologies that offer high reliability and low latency. Massive MIMO, Multiple-Input MultipleOutput, is a key technology for the upcoming 5G systems and is one part of the solution to increase the reliability. More specifically, when increasing the number of base station antennas in a massive MIMO systems the chan...

We study axisymmetric thermomechanical deformations of a thick target being penetrated by a fast-moving rigid cylindrical rod with a hemispherical nose, and presume that target deformations appear steady to an observer situated at the penetrator nose tip. Both isotropic and kinematic hardening of the target material are considered. It is found that kinematic hardening increases the normal stres...

Highly mineralized biological materials such as nacre (mother of pearl), tooth enamel or conch shell boast unique and attractive combinations of stiffness, strength and toughness. The structures of these biological materials and their associated mechanisms are now inspiring new types of advanced structural materials. However, despite significant efforts, no bottom up fabrication method could so...

Disc electrophoresis was used to separate water soluble proteins from hardy, non-hardy, and frost killed cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) leaves. Amidoschwarz staining failed to reveal any new bands as a result of hardening although the relative amounts of proteins in individual bands changed. Sulfhydryl groups in the protein bands were stained with 2,2-dihydroxy-6,6-dinaphthyl disulfi...

Twinning induced plasticity steels (TWIP) are very good candidate for automotive industry applications because they potentially offer large energy absorption before failure due to their exceptional strain hardening capability and high strength. However, their behaviour is drastically influenced by the loading conditions. In this work, the mechanical behaviour of a TWIP steel sheet sample was in...

The strain hardening behavior of model polymer glasses is studied with simulations over a wide range of entanglement densities, temperatures, strain rates, and chain lengths. Entangled polymers deform affinely at scales larger than the entanglement length as assumed in entropic network models of strain hardening.The dependence of strain hardening on strain and entanglement density is also consi...

In the realm of multi-axial ratcheting, a step by step mathematical approach is developed for the parameter determination of decomposed kinematic hardening rules. For this purpose, key characteristics are mathematically derived for these hardening rules under multi-axial loading. These characteristics are then utilized to develop expressions which relate the loading history to the accumulated p...

As the turbine industries need to manufacture turbine blades made of martensitic stainless steel AISI 420 with high toughness and wear resistance, local laser hardening has become more and more important. In this research, surface of the samples was initially hardened by high-power pulsed laser beam; then, optimum parameters of hardening were calculated and wear resistance of surface hardened s...