in the last decade, decrease of the wear rate, increase in the axel load, and the velocity of the trains have changed the main damage mechanism of railway wheels from wear to rolling contact fatigue (rcf). rcf may lead to surface and subsurface cracks. the interaction between wear and rcf, removes the surface cracks, but the subsurface crack propagate gradually, and may lead to deeper and more ...

Mechanisms for fatigue crack closure under plane strain conditions have recently been identified at very low (near-threshold) stress intensities in terms of effects of excess corrosion deposits or fracture surface roughness in promoting premature closure of the crack. In the present paper, a geometric model is presented for crack closure induced by fracture surface roughness. This model specifi...

In all-ceramic restorations, crack formation and propagation phenomena are of major concern, since they may result in intra-oral fracture. The objective of this study was calculation of damage in porcelain MOD inlays by utilization of a finite-element (FE) implementation of the distributed crack theory. "Damage" is defined as the parameter that describes the local decrease of stiffness caused b...

A combined experimental/analytical work is carried out to elucidate the fracture resistance of a thin, hard coating bonded to a semi-infinite substrate due to indentation by a cylindrical surface. The bending of the coating under the softer substrate induces concentrated tensile stress regions at the lower and upper surfaces of the coating, from which cracks may ensue. The evolution of such dam...

Dynamic crack growth along a bimaterial interface under impact shear loading is analyzed numerically. The material on each side of the bond line is characterized by an isotropic hyperelastic constitutive relation. A cohesive surface constitutive relation is also speci®ed that relates the tractions and displacement jumps across the bond line and that allows for the creation of new free surface. ...

Microstructural degradation is a predominant source of damage in polycrystalline alloys that are commonly used in diverse applications. For early diagnosis and prognosis of failures, it is essential to understand the mechanisms of damage growth specifically in the crack initiation phase, which is still an intriguing phenomenon for scientists due to sensing inaccuracies and modeling uncertaintie...

Experiments in brittle, amorphous PMMA indicate that the process of dynamic fracture is governed by a micro-branching instability. At a critical velocity, vc, a single crack undergoes an abrupt, well-defined transition to microscopic crack branching. As a result, the velocity of the crack develops oscillations, the mean acceleration decreases and structure is formed on the fracture surface. Bey...

The objectives of this work were to develop an electromagnetic scattering model that can be used to predict the microwave scattering from a crack in a metallic surface, and to evaluate the potential of using microwave scattering measurements to determine the dimensions of the crack. The .initial approach to this problem has been to model the surface crack as a section of rectangular waveguide s...

A high-order generalized finite element method (GFEM) for non-planar three-dimensional crack surfaces is presented. Discontinuous p-hierarchical enrichment functions are applied to strongly graded tetrahedral meshes automatically created around crack fronts. The GFEM is able to model a crack arbitrarily located within a finite element mesh and thus the proposed method allows fully automated fra...

Analyses of dynamic crack growth along interfaces are discussed. The material on each side of the bond line is characterized by an elastic constitutive relation. A cohesive surface constitutive relation that allows for the creation of new free surface is also specified across the bond line. The resistance to crack initiation and the crack speed history are then predicted without invoking any ad...