The failure due to accidental drop of magnetic recording disks made of brittle or ductile materials is of great interest in the design of small form factor hard disk drives. In this study, fracture of glass disks (brittle material) and plastic deformation of aluminum disks (ductile material) at very high shock levels caused by accidental drop are investigated using finite element analysis. It i...

[1] Localized regions of deformation such as faults and shear zones are ubiquitous in the Earth’s lithosphere. However, we lack a simple unified framework of localization that is independent of the mechanism or scale of localization. We address this issue by introducing the effective stress exponent, ne, a parameter that describes how a material responds to a local perturbation of an internal v...

A tensile mechanical test suitable to measure the adhesion between brittle coatings and ductile substrates was applied to measure the adhesion of painted layers on polypropylene blends. The test involves the tensile deformation of the painted assembly, resulting in the periodic cracking of the brittle coating on the ductile substrate. The interfacial shear strength was determined by measuring t...

This paper examines the microstructure and mechanical properties of Ta20Nb20Hf20Zr20Ti20. Two casting processes, namely, gravity casting and suction-assisted casting, were applied, both followed by Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP). The aim of the current study was to investigate the creep and tensile properties of the material, since the literature review revealed no data whatsoever regarding these...

The characterization of nanomaterials under high strain rates is critical to understand their suitability for dynamic applications such as nanoresonators and nanoswitches. It is also of great theoretical importance to explore nanomechanics with dynamic and rate effects. Here, we report in situ scanning electron microscope (SEM) tensile testing of bicrystalline silver nanowires at strain rates u...

For subduction to occur, plates must bend and slide past overriding plates along fault zones. This deformation is associated with significant energy dissipation, which changes the energy balance of mantle convection and influences the thermal history of the Earth. To parameterize these effects, a subduction zone was included in a small region of a finite element model for the mantle, which also...

Recent progress in microand nanofabrication techniques enables the creation of hierarchically architected microlattices with dimensional control over six orders of magnitude, from centimeters down to nanometers. This hierarchical control facilitates the exploration of opportunities to exploit nano-sized material effects in structural materials. In this work, we present the fabrication, characte...

Banding in obsidian from Big Glass Mountain (BGM), Medicine Lake volcano, California, and Mayor Island (MI), New Zealand, provides a record with a 1/wavenumber power-spectral density and multifractal characteristics. The samples are compositionally homogeneous, with banding defined by variable microlite content (BGM) or vesicularity (MI). In both samples, banding formation is well explained by ...