Advances in Deformation and Fracture Mechanics for Engineering Materials
A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Mechanical Engineering".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 September 2026 | Viewed by 12
Special Issue Editor
Interests: high temperature structural integrity; creep damage constitutive equations; methodologies of multiscale modelling of creep deformation and damage; computational, computing, machine learning and AI
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to publish in this Special Issue.
The ability of engineering materials to withstand deformation and resist fracture remains fundamental to the safety and longevity of modern infrastructure and advanced technologies. From power plants, pipelines, and transportation systems to space exploration, fusion energy, and multi-century nuclear‑waste containment, structural integrity underpins every critical engineering system. Rapid advances in materials design, extreme‑environment applications, and computational intelligence create an urgent need to consolidate new insights, methodologies, and predictive frameworks. This Special Issue addresses that need by uniting foundational mechanics with emerging innovations.
A central theme is the full research continuum, spanning technological drivers, methodological development, rigorous validation, and long-term predictability. Technological challenges—such as ultra-low temperatures in space structures, high‑radiation reactor environments, and geological nuclear‑waste storage—demand modelling frameworks capable of capturing deformation and fracture across extreme conditions and extended timescales.
At the same time, the Special Issue maintains a strong emphasis on established engineering sectors where deformation and fracture mechanics remain essential. Power‑generation systems, pressure‑boundary components, pipelines, welded structures, rotating machinery, and petrochemical infrastructure continue to provide the “bread‑and‑butter” applications that anchor the field. Linking these traditional domains with frontier challenges strengthens both scientific depth and industrial relevance.
Methodological advances of interest include mechanism-based constitutive laws, crystal plasticity, phase-field and cohesive-zone fracture models, and multiscale approaches connecting microstructural evolution to structural integrity. The Special Issue also welcomes emerging AI-enhanced methods, including machine‑learning‑assisted modelling, physics-informed neural networks, surrogate models, and automated image-based crack detection.
Validation remains essential, and contributions integrating in‑situ microscopy, digital image correlation, synchrotron-based characterisation, and full-field measurement techniques are strongly encouraged. Work addressing uncertainty quantification, reproducibility, and benchmark comparisons will be especially valuable.
The overarching goal is predictability: models and frameworks capable of reliably forecasting deformation, crack initiation, crack growth, and long-term degradation under complex loading and environmental conditions.
Dr. Qiang Xu
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- deformation and fracture mechanics
- power plant, extreme environment and industrial materials
- mechanism-based and AI-enhanced modelling
- validation and uncertainty quantification
- predictive structural integrity
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