High-cycle fatigue (HCF), involving the premature initiation and/or rapid propagation of small cracks to failure due to high-frequency cyclic loading, has been identified as one of the leading causes of turbine engine failures in aircraft. In this work, we consider the feasibility of using grain-boundary engineering to improve the HCF properties of a polycrystalline nickel-base superalloy, René...

The mode I fracture toughness as a function of crack length of medium density fiberboard (MDF), particle board (PB), and Douglas-fir (DF) were all measured using a new energy-based method. PB and MDF are examples of composites that develop fiber bridging during crack propagation, which causes their toughness to increase with crack length. Longitudinal cracks in DF also displayed fiber bridging ...

Temperature control is a key factor which affects the construction quality of the mass concrete, which is also an important measure to prevent crack propagation. Lots of engineering practices show that most of temperature cracks come out in the form of the surface crack during the construction of the concrete dam. In addition, deep cracks and transverse cracks are usually developed by surface c...

By a combination of geometrical and configurational analysis we study the properties of absolute minimal and equilibrium states of general Mumford-Shah functionals, with applications to models of quasistatic brittle fracture propagation. The main results concern the mathematical relations between physical quantities as energy release rate and energy concentration for 3D cracks with complex shap...