We present Surface Crack Antenna Reflectometric Sensing or SCARS: a chipless RFID sensor that enables pervasive, wireless surface crack detection in structural materials. We outline the sensor design and demonstrate how crack length and orientation can be uniquely related to the backscatter signal signature of the SCARS sensor. In doing so, design techniques that improve sensor sensitivity and ...

This paper reports the potential drop technique as an imaging tool for the clear identification and sensitive evaluation of very small surface cracks. The distributions of d-c potential drop around the surface cracks are obtained by scanning the closely coupled probes potential drop sensor, and a methodology for evaluating a 3-D crack from the potential drop profiles measured across and along t...

The effect of the specimen (or component) thickness has been shown to have a significant effect on closure behaviour and this seems to be related to the relative size of the plastic zone. Real cracks are inherently three-dimensional; plane stress-like behaviour is found close to the region where the crack front intersects the free surface, whereas most of the crack front will experience somethi...

Delamination of coatings initiated by small cracks paralleling the free surface is investigated under conditions of high thermal flux associated with a through-thickness temperature gradient. A crack disrupts the heat flow thereby inducing crack tip stress intensities that can become critical. A complete parametric dependence of the energy release rate and mode mix is presented in terms of the ...

As our title implies, we consider materials failure at the fundamental level of atomic bond breaking and motion. Using computational molecular dynamics, scalable parallel computers and visualization, we are studying the failure of notched solids under tension using in excess of 108 atoms. In rapid brittle fracture, two of the most intriguing features are the roughening of a crack’s surface with...

BACKGROUND One of few persisting problems of cemented total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is aseptic loosening of tibial component due to degradation of the interface between bone cement and metallic tibial shaft component, particularly for surface cemented tibial components. Surface cementation technique has important clinical meaning in case of revision and for avoidance of stress shielding. Degrad...

In the southwest U.S., cracks in alluvial fan surface clasts have a preferred orientation independent of rock fabric and shape. In this paper, we show that differential insolation of incipient cracks of random orientations predicts a distribution of crack orientations consistent with field observations. In this model, crack growth by hydration and/ or thermal weathering is primarily a function ...

Various analytical methods based on the real reciprocity relation are applied to the problem of Rayleigh wave scattering by a surface crack. In one formulation, the reflection coefficient observed at the transducer terminals is expressed in terms of an integral over the crack surface of the product of the perturbed and unperturbed fields. This integral is then converted to a volume integral and...

Although a thorough understanding of fatigue crack initiation is lacking, experiments have shown that the evolution of distinct dislocation distributions and surface roughness are key ingredients. In the present study we introduce a computational framework that ties together dislocation dynamics, the fields due to crystallographic surface steps and cohesive surfaces to model near-atomic separat...

In this study, the frozen stress photoelastic method was used to investigate the three-dimensional effect on the crack growth behavior in a centrally perforated circular cylinder under internal pressure. The inner surface of the cylinder had a star shape, which consisted of six fins. The specimens were capped at the ends and pressurized internally above critical temperature after real cracks we...