European Structural Integrity Society – serie

The ESIS-Technical Committee 9 on Concrete was established in 1990 and has met seven times. A proposal was put to European and extra-European laboratories entitled "Scale effects and transitional failure phenomena of reinforced concrete beams in flexure" which lead to several positive responses.

The central topic discussed by the committee was that of the minimum reinforcement in concrete members. The minimum amount of reinforcement is defined as that for which "peak load at first concrete cracking" and "ultimate load after steel yielding" are equal. In this way, any brittle behaviour is avoided as well as any localized failure, if the member is not over-reinforced. In other words, there is a reinforcement percentage range, depending on the size-scale, within which the plastic limit analysis may be applied with its static and kinematic theorems.

Carpinteri, Ferro, Bosco and El-Katieb propose a LEFM model, according to which reinforcement reactions are applied directly on the crack surfaces and a compatibility condition is locally imposed on the crack opening displacement in correspondence with the reinforcement. The theoretical model is found to provide a satisfactory estimate of the minimum percentage of reinforcement that depends on the scale and enables the element in flexure to prevent brittle failure.

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at Fatigue Design 95 held in Helsinki, Finland from 5-8 September 1995. The papers have been peer reviewed and present practical aspects for the design of components and structures to avoid fatigue failure. Topics covered include: fatigue design experiences, ground vehicle components, component reliability, multiaxial fatigue, notch analysis, service loading, welded structures, probabilistics aspects in fatigue, fatigue design optimization.

This volume contains 18 papers selected from 90 presented at the Fifth International Conference on Biaxial/Multiaxial Fatigue and Fracture held in Cracow, Poland 8-12 September 1997. The papers in this book deal with theoretical, computational and experimental aspects of the multiaxial fatigue and fracture of engineering materials and structures. The papers are divided into the following four categories:1. Proportional cyclic loading2. Non-proportional cyclic loading3. Variable amplitude and random loading4. Crack growth

Most papers in this publication talk about the behaviour of constructional materials and elements of machines under non-proportional loading and under variable amplitude and random loading, which are more realistic load histories met in industrial practice. Variable amplitude loading under cyclic load with basic frequency and random loading under load with a continuous band of frequency is classified here. This book gives a review of the latest world success and directions of investigations on multiaxial fatigue and fracture. More and more often publications are results of the co-operation of researchers from different laboratories and countries. Seven out of eighteen papers included here were worked out by international authors teams. This is a symptom of the times, when science and investigations know no borders.

This book is an overview of ESIS Technical Committee 4's activities since the mid-1980s. A wide range of tests is described and the numerous authors is a reflection of the wide and enthusiastic support we have had. With the establishment of the Technical Committee 4, two major areas were identified as appropriate for the activity. Firstly there was an urgent need for standard, fracture mechanics based, test methods to be designed for polymers and composites. A good deal of academic work had been done, but the usefulness to industry was limited by the lack of agreed standards. Secondly there was a perceived need to explore the use of such data in the design of plastic parts. Some modest efforts were made in early meetings to explore this, but little progress was made. In contrast things moved along briskly in the standards work and this has dominated the activity for the last fourteen years. The design issue remains a future goal.

This book contains 15 fully peer-reviewed Invited Papers which were presented at the 13th Biennial European Conference on Fracture and is a companion to the CD-ROM http://www.elsevier.com/locate/isbn/008043701xProceedings.The organisers of the ECF 13 opted from the very beginning for an application-orientated conference, and consequently, this book contributes to the understanding of fracture phenomena, and disseminates fracture concepts and their application to the solution of engineering problems to practitioners in a wide range of fields.The fields covered in this book can be broadly classified into: elastic-plastic fracture mechanics, fracture dynamics, fatigue and interactive processes, failure, structural integrity, coatings and materials, with applications to the following industrial sectors: transport, aerospace engineering, civil engineering, pipelines and automotive engineering.

From Charpy to Present Impact Testing contains 52 peer-reviewed papers selected from those presented at the Charpy Centenary Conference held in Poitiers, France, 2-5 October 2001.

The name of Charpy remains associated with impact testing on notched specimens. At a time when many steam engines exploded, engineers were preoccupied with studying the resistance of steels to impact loading.

The Charpy test has provided invaluable indications on the impact properties of materials. It revealed the brittle ductile transition of ferritic steels.

The Charpy test is able to provide more quantitative results by instrumenting the striker, which allows the evolution of the applied load during the impact to be determined. The Charpy test is of great importance to evaluate the embrittlement of steels by irradiation in nuclear reactors. Progress in computer programming has allowed for a computer model of the test to be developed; a difficult task in view of its dynamic, three dimensional, adiabatic nature. Together with precise observations of the processes of fracture, this opens the possibility of transferring quantitatively the results of Charpy tests to real components. This test has also been extended to materials other than steels, and is also frequently used to test polymeric materials.

Thus the Charpy test is a tool of great importance and is still at the root of a number of investigations; this is the reason why it was felt that the centenary of the Charpy test had to be celebrated. The Société Française de Métallurgie et de Matériaux decided to organise an international conference which was put under the auspices of the European Society for the Integrity of Structures (ESIS).

This Charpy Centenary Conference (CCC 2001) was held in Poitiers, at Futuroscope in October 2001. More than 150 participants from 17 countries took part in the discussions and about one hundred presentations were given. An exhibition of equipment showed, not only present day testing machines, but also one of the first Charpy pendulums, brought all the way from Imperial College in London.

From Charpy to Present Impact Testing puts together a number of significant contributions. They are classified into 6 headings:

.Keynote lectures,.Micromechanisms,.Polymers,.Testing procedures,.Applications,.Modelling.

This volume contains a selection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the International Conference on Temperature-Fatigue Interaction, held in Paris, May 29-31, 2001, organised by the Fatigue Committee of the Societ� Fran�aise de M�tallurgie et de Mat�riaux (SF2M), under the auspices of the European Structural Integrity Society.

The conference disseminated recent research results and promoting the interaction and collaboration amongst materials scientists, mechanical engineers and design engineers.

Many engineering components and structures used in the automotive, aerospace, power generation and many other industries experience cyclic mechanical loads at high temperature or temperature transients causing thermally induced stresses. The increase of operating temperature and thermal mechanical loading trigger the interaction with time-dependent phenomena such as creep and environmental effects (oxidation, corrosion).

A large number of metallic materials were investigated including aluminium alloys for the automotive industry, steels and cast iron for the automotive industry and materials forming, stainless steels for power plants, titanium, composites, intermetallic alloys and nickel base superalloys for aircraft industry, polymers.

Important progress was observed in testing practice for high temperature behaviour, including environment and thermo-mechanical loading as well as in observation techniques.

A large problem which was emphasized is to know precisely service loading cycles under non-isothermal conditions. This was considered critical for numerous thermal fatigue problems discussed in this conference.