Micromechanisms of Fracture and Fatigue In a Multi-scale Context

Micromechanisms of Fracture and Fatigue provides a detailed insight into the basic micromechanisms of the fracture behaviour of materials, with applications in the engineering industry.

Divided into three parts, the first part is devoted to models of deformation and fracture in perfect crystals. Using various atomistic methods, the theoretical strength of solids as a highest reachable strength limit is calculated for a wide range of elements and compounds and compared with experimental data. Connection between the onset of local plasticity in nanoindentation tests and the ideal shear strength is analysed using a multi-scale approach. Moreover, the nature of intrinsic brittleness or ductility of crystal lattices is also demonstrated by the coupling of atomistic and mesoscopic approaches.

The second part addresses extrinsic sources of fracture toughness in engineering materials, related to their microstructure and to microstructurally induced crack tortuosity. The results of multilevel modelling, including statistical aspects of microstructure, are used to explain the remarkable phenomena experimentally discovered.

In the third part of the book, basic micromechanisms of fatigue propagation of long cracks under uniaxial and multiaxial loading are discussed on the basis of the unified mesoscopic model of crack tip shielding and closure, taking both microstructure and statistical effects into account. Applications to failure analysis are also outlined. In general, an attempt is made to distinguish intrinsic and extrinsic sources of materials resistance to fracture.

Jaroslav Pokluda received his PhD in the Physics of Condensed Matter from the University of J. E. Purkyne, Brno, Czech Republic. He was with the Military Research Institute of Materials and Technology until 1985 and, since then, he has been with the Brno University of Technology as Associate Professor, Professor and Head of the Department of Materials Micromechanics and Applied Acoustics. His research interests include modelling micromechanisms of fracture and fatigue (metals and ceramics); atomistic computations of mechanical properties of crystals; quantitative fractography (metals and ceramics); and uniaxial and biaxial fatigue of materials (metals). He is an author or co-author of 3 textbooks and 92 papers in scientific journals. He has edited 4 special issues of scientific journals (Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Strength of Materials, Materials Science Forum) and is on the editorial board of the journals Strength of Materials and Physicochemical Mechanics of Materials. Since 1999 he has been the Czech representative in the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS). He was a co-chair of 7 international conferences MSMF1-6, and ECF17. He received commemorative medals awarded by the Institute of Materials Research at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia (2005) and Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic (2008).

Pavel Šandera received his PhD in the Physics of Condensed Matter from the Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic. Since 1978 he has been with the Brno University of Technology as Associate Professor and Professor (2006). His research interests include modelling micromechanisms of fracture and fatigue (metals and ceramics); atomistic computations of mechanical properties of crystals; stochastic geometry; and fatigue of materials (metals). He has published 41 papers in scientific journals and edited specials issues of Materials Science Forum and Engineering Failure Analysis. He is on the editorial board of the Engineering Mechanics journal. He received the commemorative medal awarded by the Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic (2009).