Age-related deterioration of the fracture properties of bone, coupled with increased life expectancy, is responsible for increasing incidence of bone fracture in the elderly, and hence, an understanding of how its fracture properties degrade with age is essential. The present study describes ex vivo fracture experiments to quantitatively assess the effect of aging on the fracture toughness prop...

Fracture toughness is an important property that characterizes a material’s brittleness or resistance to fracture. Although some fracture toughness test methods have been refined and even standardized, many researchers have continued to use the Vickers indentation crack length method as an expedient. In this paper, Vickers indentation fracture resistance data for Standard Reference Material SRM...

In the present study, fracture toughness of functionally graded steels in crack divider configuration has been modeled. By utilizing plain carbon and austenitic stainless steels slices with various thicknesses and arrangements as electroslag remelting electrodes, functionally graded steels were produced. The fracture toughness of the functionally graded steels in crack divider configuration has...

Accurate estimation of fracture behavior of commercial LiMn₂O₄ particles is of great importance to predict the performance and lifetime of a battery. The present study compares two different microscale techniques to quantify the fracture toughness of LiMn₂O₄ particles embedded in an epoxy matrix. The first technique uses focused ion beam (FIB) milled micro pillars that are subsequently tested u...

S E On the Fracture Toughness of Advanced Materials A R C H By Maximilien E. Launey, and Robert O. Ritchie* N E W S Few engineering materials are limited by their strength; rather they are limited by their resistance to fracture or fracture toughness. It is not by accident that most critical structures, such as bridges, ships, nuclear pressure vessels and so forth, are manufactured from materia...

Heat-treatment in lithic technology refers to the controlled heating of quartz-rich, brittle, elastic lithic materials in order to reduce fracture toughness and improve knapping qualities. Successful heat-treatment reduces the point-tensile strength of many varieties of micro-crystalline quartz, including chert, without perceptibly altering any of the other properties with regard to fracture. T...

Residual stress present in coupons used for fracture testing will influence the experimental determination of fracture toughness. Triaxial residual stress (e.g., due to welding) can alter both the driving force for fracture and the crack-tip constraint at a specified load, so that the apparent toughness of a coupon depends on the residual stress present. In this paper, we employ a micromechanic...

The purpose of this study was to compare the properties of 2 new dual-cure, bulk-fill restorative composite resins to those of a hybrid composite resin material. Depth of cure, fracture toughness, porosity, microleakage, and volumetric shrinkage properties were examined. With the exception of fracture toughness, significant differences were found among materials. Compared to the incrementally p...

The effects of temperature and loading rate on delamination growth were studied. The delamination fracture toughness of IM7/K3B was measured at 149°C, 177°C, and 204°C. At each temperature the tests were performed with a variety of loading rates so that the delamination initiated over the range of time from 0.5 sec to 24 hrs. The double cantilever beam (DCB) test was used to measure fracture to...

Recently, biomaterials-based tissue engineering strategies such as hydrogels have offered great promise in repairing articular cartilage. Mechanical failure testing in outcome analyses is given the crucial clinical importance to the success of engineered constructs. Interpenetrating networks (IPNs) are gaining more attention due to their superior mechanical integrity. Extensive fracture toughne...