ME 584
ADVANCED FRACTURE AND FATIGUE OF MATERIALS

Course Description

Fracture mechanics will be used as a basis for predicting fracture and fatigue behavior and understanding failure mechanisms in materials. Course will include experimental demonstrations and analysis of real fracture and fatigue data.

Topics

• Elasticity, stress concentrations
• Griffith theory, strain energy release rate, stress analysis, stress intensity
• Superposition, crack tip plasticity, plane stress/strain, plastic constraint, critical crack size
• G vs. K, CTODs, KIc testing, R-curves
• R-curve testing, elastic-plastic fracture mechanics (EPFM), J-integral, JIc testing, fracture mechanisms
• Ductile and brittle fracture, DBTT, toughening mechanisms, extrinsic vs. intrinsic toughening
• Crack bridging, embrittlement, environmentally assisted cracking growth
• Fatigue: (S/N) approach, crack initiation
• Fatigue: damage tolerant approach, crack growth, life prediction, da/dN-ΔK testing, crack growth mechanisms, fatigue markings
• Crack closure, brittle material fatigue, crack size effects

Learning Outcomes

The student, upon completion of this course, will be able to:

• Correctly apply fracture mechanics to predict material failure.
• Identify and describe the basic fracture and fatigue mechanisms.
• Correctly predict fatigue life using S/N and fracture mechanics based methods.
• Correctly identify the cause of failure of a material based on fracture surface observations.
• Correctly identify archival literature papers on a current topic in fracture or fatigue and compose a paper expressing individual ideas on that topic.