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Fracture toughness

About: Fracture toughness is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 39642 publications have been published within this topic receiving 854338 citations.


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Journal ArticleDOI
05 Dec 2008-Science
TL;DR: In this article, the authors emulate Nature's toughening mechanisms through the combination of two ordinary compounds, aluminum oxide and polymethylmethacrylate, into ice-templated structures whose toughness can be over 300 times (in energy terms) that of their constituents.
Abstract: The notion of mimicking natural structures in the synthesis of new structural materials has generated enormous interest but has yielded few practical advances. Natural composites achieve strength and toughness through complex hierarchical designs extremely difficult to replicate synthetically. Here we emulate Nature's toughening mechanisms through the combination of two ordinary compounds, aluminum oxide and polymethylmethacrylate, into ice-templated structures whose toughness can be over 300 times (in energy terms) that of their constituents. The final product is a bulk hybrid ceramic material whose high yield strength and fracture toughness ({approx}200 MPa and {approx}30 MPa{radical}m) provide specific properties comparable to aluminum alloys. These model materials can be used to identify the key microstructural features that should guide the synthesis of bio-inspired ceramic-based composites with unique strength and toughness.

1,457 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, double-wall carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) and an epoxy matrix were produced by a standard calandering technique and a very good dispersion of both DWCNT and carbon black (CB) was observed.

1,455 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the critical value of tensile stress (a) for unstable cleavage fracture to the fracture toughness (K,,) for a high-nitrogen mild steel under plane strain conditions.
Abstract: SUMMARY AN ANALYSIS is presented which relates the critical value of tensile stress (a,) for unstable cleavage fracture to the fracture toughness (K,,) for a high-nitrogen mild steel under plane strain conditions. The correlation is based on (i) the model for cleavage cracking developed by E. Smith and (ii) accurate plastic*lastic solutions for the stress distributions ahead of a sharp crack derived by J. R. Rice and co-workers. Unstable fracture is found to be consistent with the attainment of a stress intensification close to the tip such that the maximum principal stress a,, exceeds a, over a characteristic distance, determined as twice the grain size. The model is seen to predict the experimentally determined variation of K,, with temperature over the range -150 to -75°C from a knowledge of the yield stress and hardening properties. It is further shown that the onset of fibrous fracture ahead of the tip can be deduced from the position of the maximum achievable stress intensiiication. The relationship between the model for fracture ahead of a sharp crack, and that ahead of a rounded notch, is discussed in detail.

1,374 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
28 Feb 2008-Nature
TL;DR: T titanium–zirconium-based BMG composites with room-temperature tensile ductility exceeding 10 per cent, yield strengths of 1.2–1.5 GPa, K1C up to ∼170 MPa m1/2, and fracture energies for crack propagation as high as G1C ≈ 340 kJ’m-2.2 were reported.
Abstract: Metallic glasses have been the subject of intense scientific study since the 1960s, owing to their unique properties such as high strength, large elastic limit, high hardness, and amorphous microstructure. However, bulk metallic glasses have not been used in the high strength structural applications for which they have so much potential, owing to a highly localized failure mechanism that results in catastrophic failure during unconfined loading. In this thesis, bulk metallic glass matrix composites are designed with the combined benefits of high yield strengths and tensile ductility. This milestone is achieved by first investigating the length scale of the highly localized deformation, known as shear bands, that governs fracture in all metallic glasses. Under unconfined loading, a shear band grows to a certain length that is dependent on the fracture toughness of the glass before a crack nucleates and fracture occurs. Increasing the fracture toughness and ductility involves adding microstructural stabilization techniques that prevent shear bands from lengthening and promotes formation of multiple shear bands. To accomplish this, we develop in-situ formed bulk metallic glass matrix-composites with soft crystalline dendrites whose size and distribution are controlled through a novel semi-solid processing technique. The new alloys have a dramatically increased room-temperature ductility and a fracture toughness that appears to be similar to the toughest steels. Owing to their low modulus, the composites are therefore among the toughest known materials, a claim that has recently been confirmed independently by a fracture mechanics group. We extend our toughening strategy to a titanium-vanadium-based glass-dendrite composite system with density as low as 4.97 g/cm3. The new low-density composites rival the mechanical properties of the best structural crystalline Ti alloys. We demonstrate new processing techniques available in the highly toughened composites: room temperature cold rolling, work hardening, and thermoplastic forming. This thesis is a proven road map for developing metallic glass composites into real structural engineering materials.

1,324 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: This work emulates nature's toughening mechanisms by combining two ordinary compounds, aluminum oxide and polymethyl methacrylate, into ice-templated structures whose toughness can be more than 300 times that of their constituents.
Abstract: Tough, bio-inspired hybrid materials E. Munch, 1 M. E. Launey, 1 D. H. Alsem, 1,2 E. Saiz, 1 A.P. Tomsia, 1 R. O. Ritchie 1,3∗ The notion of mimicking natural structures in the synthesis of new structural materials has generated enormous interest but has yielded few practical advances. Natural composites achieve strength and toughness through complex hierarchical designs extremely difficult to replicate synthetically. Here we emulate Nature’s toughening mechanisms through the combination of two ordinary compounds, aluminum oxide and polymethylmethacrylate, into ice-templated structures whose toughness can be over 300 times (in energy terms) that of their constituents. The final product is a bulk hybrid ceramic material whose high yield strength and fracture toughness (~200 MPa and ~30 MPa√m) provide specific properties comparable to aluminum alloys. These model materials can be used to identify the key microstructural features that should guide the synthesis of bio-inspired ceramic-based composites with unique strength and toughness. With the quest for more efficient energy-related technologies, there is an imperative to develop lightweight, high-performance structural materials that possess both exceptional strength and toughness. Unfortunately, these two properties tend to be mutually exclusive and the attainment of optimal mechanical performance is invariably a compromise often achieved through the empirical design of microstructures. Nature has long developed the ability to combine brittle minerals and organic molecules into hybrid composites with exceptional fracture resistance and structural capabilities (1-3); indeed, many natural materials like bone, wood and nacre (abalone shell) have highly sophisticated structures with complex hierarchical designs whose properties are far in excess what could be expected from a simple mixture of their components (2,4). Biological mineralized composites, in particular bone, dentin and nacre (5-7), can generate fracture toughness (i.e., resistance to the initiation and growth of a crack) primarily by extrinsic toughening mechanisms (8) that “shield” any crack from the applied loads. These mechanisms, which are quite different to those that toughen metals for Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720, USA To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: roritchie@lbl.gov

1,322 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023972
20222,107
20211,361
20201,324
20191,383
20181,305