Mineralization is a typical strategy used in natural materials to achieve high stiffness and hardness for structural functions such as skeletal support, protection or predation. High mineral content generally leads to brittleness, yet natural materials such as bone, mollusk shells or glass sponge achieve relatively high toughness considering the weakness of their constituents through intricate ...

In this paper, the data reduction equations for common delamination toughness tests are rederived for use with specimens which have bonded doublers. The common toughness tests considered here are the double cantilever beam (DCB) for mode I toughness; the end notch flexure (3ENF) and 4 point ENF (4ENF) for mode II toughness; and the mixed mode bending (MMB) test for testing under combined mode I...

The fracture toughness of SLG filled phenolic composites have been determined by short bar tests. It is expensive to prepare the samples for the tests. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a mathematical model that will predict the fracture toughness of particulate filled phenolic composites. Mathematical models for tensile strength, Young’s modulus are available but not for impact strength an...

Mental toughness has been explored predominantly within sport contexts. Nevertheless, it is difficult to conceive mental toughness as only applicable to athletes. This study examines whether mentally tough participants exhibit resilience against stress. This is a cross-sectional study based on two different samples: Sample 1 consisted of 284 high school students (99 males, 185 females, M = 18.3...

In 1995, Brouwer proved that the toughness of a connected k-regular graph G is at least k/λ − 2, where λ is the maximum absolute value of the non-trivial eigenvalues of G. Brouwer conjectured that one can improve this lower bound to k/λ − 1 and that many graphs (especially graphs attaining equality in the Hoffman ratio bound for the independence number) have toughness equal to k/λ. In this pape...

The present study was carried out to investigate the effect of alloying elements and thermo-mechanical treatment (TMT) i.e. hot rolling and forging with different reduction ratios on the hardness (HV) and impact toughness (J) of heat-treated low alloy steels. An understanding of the combined effect of TMT and alloying elements and by measuring hardness, impact toughness, resulting from differen...

Despite its rising prominence in the academic literature, the underlying inputs, processes and outputs of mental toughness remain relatively unexplored (Hardy, Bell, & Beattie, 2014). As such, the purpose of the study is to present a systems-approach model of mental toughness that classifies attributes of mental toughness within the aggregated system of inputs, processes and outputs. To this en...

An attempt has been made to determine the strength and impact properties of Cr-Mo steel weld and base materials by varying the current during manual metal arc welding. Toughness over a temperature range from -32 to 100°C of base, heat affected zone (HAZ) and weld zones at three current settings are made. It is observed that the deterioration in notch toughness at any zone with the temperature d...

We propose a versatile approach to computing the effective toughness of heterogeneous media. This approach focusses on the material property independent of the details of the boundary condition. The key idea is what we call a surfing boundary condition, where a steadily propagating crack opening displacement is applied as a boundary condition to a large domain while the crack set is allowed to ...