Tackling Materials Failure: Scale Bridging for Structural Integrity

Dear Colleagues,

As the Second Law of Thermodynamics suggests, failure is an intrinsic characteristic of any materials system. Given its prevalence, one would assume that assessing a materials system’s capability to endure is relatively straightforward; however, this is not the case. The proverbial butterfly effect is an appropriate moniker for failure as delicate and pernicious events rooted in the lower-length scales can evolve almost unpredictably to severely compromise the structural integrity of a materials system. For example, in metallic systems, seemingly innocuous dislocations at the atomic scale can evolve into life-limiting cracks in a myriad of ways. Some dislocations might nucleate microcracks whose stress intensities are amplified by micron-sized voids, thereby facilitating ductile crack propagation. Others might initiate microcracks that evolve synergistically with oxidation, creep, and/or fatigue loading. In organic materials systems, physiological processes, such as the up-regulation of proteins (e.g., in cell membrane repair), can act to strengthen or even heal the system, making the question of failure both stochastic and highly non-linear.

This Special Issue is intended to give material scientists, experimentalists, computational mechanicians, biochemists, applied mathematicians, and stakeholders, such as fleet managers, a platform to disseminate their novel work at the intersection of fundamental failure-related science and more practical life-ing technologies. Materials systems of interest include, e.g., metals and their alloys, metallic glasses, metal matrix composites, functionally graded materials, ceramics and ceramic composites, and organic materials, such as biofilms and bone. This breadth of systems is meant localize competencies from different fields that typically do not overlap with one another, thereby presenting opportunities for cross-cutting innovation. Work in experimental methods development (e.g., in situ fracture tests, tests for mixed-mode fracture, novel approach for uncertainty propagation while forecasting life) and computational analysis (e.g., finite element framework bridging scales, application of damage mechanics or geometrically explicit crack growth, cumulative damage modeling) is requested.

Prof. Dr. Aida Nonn
Dr. Albert Cerrone
Guest Editors

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