applied fracture mechanics

PrefaceKnowledge accumulated in the science of fracture can be considered as an intellectualheritage of humanity. Already at the end of Palaeolithic Era humans made firstobservations on cleavage of flint and applied them to produce sharp stone axes andother tools. The coming of Industrial Era with its attributes in the form of skyscrapers,jumbo jets, giant cruise ships, or nuclear power plants increased probability of largescale accidents and made deep understanding of the laws of fracture a question ofsurvival. In the 20th century fracture mechanics has evolved into a mature disciplineof science and engineering and became an important aspect of engineering education.At present, our understanding of fracture mechanisms is developing rapidly andnumerous new insights gained in this field are, to a significant degree, defining theface of contemporary engineering science. The power of modern supercomputerssubstantially increases the reliability of fracture mechanics based predictions, makingfracture mechanics an indispensable tool in engineering design. Today fracturemechanics faces a range of new problems, which is too vast to be discussedcomprehensively in a short Preface.This book is a collection of 13 chapters, divided into five sections primarily accordingto the field of application of the fracture mechanics methodology. Assignment of thechapters to the sections only indicates the main contents of a chapter because somechapters are interdisciplinary and cover different aspects of fracture.In section "Computational Methods" the topics comprise discussion of computationaland mathematical methods, underlying fracture mechanics applications, namely, theweight function formalism of linear fracture mechanics (chapter 1) as well as the fractalgeometry based formulation of the fracture mechanics laws (chapter 2). These chaptersattempt to overview the complex mathematical concepts in the form intelligible to abroad audience of scientists and engineers. The fractal models of fracture are furtherapplied (chapter 3) to analyze experimental data in terms of fractal geometry.Section "Fracture of Biological Tissues" focuses on discussion on the strength ofbiological tissues, in particular, on human teeth tissues such as enamel and dentin(chapter 4). On the basis of the structure-property relation analysis for the biologicaltissues the perspective directions for the development of artificial restorative materialsfor dentistry are formulated.