A new advanced system for Ultrasonic Peening (UP) of materials, details and welded elements was developed recently. The UP produces a number of beneficial effects in metals and alloys. Foremost among these is increasing the resistance of materials to surface-related failures, such as fatigue, fretting fatigue and stress corrosion cracking. The beneficial effect is achieved mainly by relieving o...

Many agencies use the AASHTO Guide for Design of Pavement Structures to design their pavement systems. The limitation inherent in this method is the empirical nature of the decision process, which was derived from a road test conducted almost 45 years ago in Ottawa, Illinois. The newly released Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG), based on NCHRP Study 1-37A, has adopted a mechan...

Environmental stress cracking (ESC) is a phenomenon in which a plastic resin is degraded by a chemical agent while under stress, and it is the leading cause of plastic component failure. It is a solvent-induced failure mode, in which the synergistic effects of the chemical agent and mechanical stresses result in cracking. A recent study showed that 25% of plastic part failures are related to ES...

Fatigue cracking is an essential problem of asphalt concrete that contributes to pavement damage. Although stone matrix asphalt (SMA) has significantly provided resistance to rutting failure, its resistance to fatigue failure is yet to be fully addressed. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of crumb rubber modifier (CRM) on stiffness and fatigue properties of SMA mixtures at optimum...

Crack initiation and growth behaviour of an austempered ductile iron (ADI) austenitised at 800C and austempered at 260C has been assessed under three point bend fatigue conditions. Initiation sites have been identified as carbides remaining from the as cast ductile iron due to insufficient austenisation. The number of carbides cracking on loading to stresses greater than 275 MPa is critical in ...

Structural deterioration is becoming a major problem when considering long term performance of infrastructures. The existence of a corrosive environment, cyclic loading and concrete cracking cause structural strength degradation. The interaction of these conditions can only be taken into account when modeling the coupled action. In this paper, a new model to assess lifetime of RC structures sub...

Bulk-metallic glasses (BMGs) are now candidate materials for structural applications due to their exceptional strength and toughness. However, their fatigue resistance can be poor and inconsistent, severely limiting their potential as reliable structural materials. As fatigue limits are invariably governed by the local arrest of microscopically small cracks at microstructural features, the lack...

This paper describes a finite element based method for simulating the effects of material removal, associated with fretting wear, on fretting fatigue parameters in a spline coupling. An incremental wear simulation technique is implemented with a single tooth finite element model of the coupling for symmetric loading, assuming equal wear on all teeth, using a comparatively coarse mesh model, for...

PURPOSE: The deterioration of elements of steel hydraulic structures (SHS) on our nation’s lock system is caused by combined effects of several complex phenomena: corrosion, cracking and fatigue, impact, and overloads. This Coastal and Hydraulics Engineering Technical Note presents examples of deterioration and a method for predicting future deterioration based on current conditions. In a compa...

Simplified fatigue and fracture mechanics based assessment methods are widely used by the industry to determine the structural integrity significance of postulated cracks, manufacturing flaws, service-induced cracking or suspected degradation of engineering components under normal and abnormal service loads. In many cases, welded joints are the regions most likely to contain original fabricatio...