Robert O. Ritchie - Böcker

Introduction to Fracture Mechanics presents an introduction to the origins, formulation and application of fracture mechanics for the design, safe operation and life prediction in structural materials and components. The book introduces and informs the reader on how fracture mechanics works and how it is so different from other forms of analysis that are used to characterize mechanical properties. Chapters cover foundational topics and the use of linear-elastic fracture mechanics, involving both K-based characterizing parameter and G-based energy approaches, and how to characterize the fracture toughness of materials under plane-strain and non plane-strain conditions using the notion of crack-resistance or R-curves.

Other sections cover far more complex nonlinear-elastic fracture mechanics based on the use of the J-integral and the crack-tip opening displacement. These topics largely involve continuum mechanics descriptions of crack initiation, slow crack growth, eventual instability by overload fracture, and subcritical cracking.

Presents how, for a given material, a fracture toughness value can be measured on a small laboratory sample and then used directly to predict the failure (by fracture, fatigue, creep, etc.) of a much larger structure in service Covers the rudiments of fracture mechanics from the perspective of the philosophy underlying the few principles and the many assumptions that form the basis of the discipline Provides readers with a "working knowledge" of fracture mechanics, describing its potency for damage-tolerant design, for preventing failures through appropriate life-prediction strategies, and for quantitative failure analysis (fracture diagnostics)

Biological materials are bottom-up designed systems formed from billions of years of natural evolution. In the long course of Darwinian competition for survival, nature has evolved a huge variety of hierarchical and multifunctional systems from nucleic acids, proteins, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, animal communities to ecological s- tems. Multilevel hierarchy a rule of nature. The complexities of biology provide an opportunity to study the basic principles of hierarchical and multifunctional s- tems design, a subject of potential interest not only to biomedical and life sciences, but also to nanosciences and nanotechnology. Systematic studies of how hierarchical structures in biology are related to their functions and properties can lead to better understanding of the effects of aging, diseases and drugs on tissues and organs, and may help developing a scienti?c basis for tissue engineering to improve the standard of living. At the same time, such studies may also provide guidance on the dev- opment of novel nanostructured hierarchical materials via a bottom-up approach, i. e. by tailor-designing materials from atomic scale and up. Currently we barely have any theoretical basis on how to design a hierarchical material to achieve a part- ular set of macroscopic properties. The new effort aiming to understand the re- tionships between hierarchical structures in biology and their mechanical as well as other functions and properties may provide challenging and rewarding opportunities for mechanics in the 21st century.