Fracture assessment of U- and V-notches is important in mechanical engineering. One can use the J-integral as fracture parameter in order to predict the critical fracture load in notches. The critical value of the J-integral in cracks is a function of the material properties. In notches, however, the material properties as well as the notch dimensions affect this critical value (named fracture ...

This paper presents a novel Membrane Deflection Fracture Experiment (MDFE) to investigate the fracture toughness of MEMS and other advanced materials in thin film form. It involves the stretching of freestanding thin-film membranes, in a fixed-fixed configuration, containing pre-existing cracks. The fracture behavior of ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD), a material developed at Argonne Nation...

Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. This article presents a novel microscratch technique for the determination of the fracture toughness of materials f...

The fracture toughness and uniaxial tensile yield strengths of unmodified and CTBN-rubbermodified epoxies were measured under hydrostatic pressure. The purpose of these experiments was to learn how suppressing cavitation in rubber particles affects the deformation mechanisms and the fracture toughness of rubber-modified epoxy. It was found that the cavitation of CTBN-rubber could be suppressed ...

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...