Advances in Fracture, Fatigue and Structural Integrity Analyses of Metals

Dear Colleagues,

Given the good response of the scientific and technical communities to our previous Special Issue in Metals, entitled “Fracture, Fatigue and Structural Integrity of Metallic Materials” (2019), and given that research in these fields is continuously increasing in qualitative and quantitative terms, this new Special Issue intends to provide a forum for the dissemination of the latest significant advances in fracture, fatigue and structural integrity analyses.

Fracture, fatigue, creep or environmentally assisted cracking, among other critical and subcritical processes, still present many open issues. Attention is being paid from the very basic aspects explaining the material response at the atomic and microstructural scales to the development of engineering procedures defining the structural integrity conditions of a given structural component.

The application of all this newly developed knowledge affects a wide range of sectors where structural safety is a major concern: nuclear power plants, civil engineering structures, oil and gas, pressurized equipment, aircraft, naval structures, etc. Structural failures in any of these sectors may have evident serious consequences in terms of human lives, environmental disasters or economic losses. Therefore, in order to avoid structural failures, it is necessary to understand the different mechanisms generating critical and subcritical processes in the structural materials and to develop assessment techniques and management procedures for the corresponding structures.

In this context, this Special Issue is focused on the latest advances in fracture, fatigue and structural integrity assessments of metallic structural components containing defects (cracks, notches, local thin areas, etc.) and also on developments that are being or could be incorporated in structural integrity assessment procedures such as BS7910, R6 or API 579-1/ASME FFS-1. Contributions covering other damage and failure processes, such as creep, environmentally assisted cracking or buckling, that affect the structural integrity of engineering structures are also welcome.

We invite you to submit original research and review articles, as well as short communications, related to these topics.

Prof. Dr. Sergio Cicero
Dr. Sergio Arrieta
Guest Editors

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. Metals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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.