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Recent developments in the field of computational modeling of fracture have opened up possibilities for designing structures against failure. A special case, called interfacial fracture or delamination, can occur in loaded composite…
In order to design tougher materials, it is crucial to understand the relationship between their composition and their resistance to fracture. To this end, we investigate the fracture toughness of usual sodium silicate glasses (NS) and…
This paper presents a computationally efficient method for the optimal design of silica aerogel porous material systems, balancing thermal insulation performance with mechanical stability under stress concentrations. The proposed approach…
Brittle materials subjected to thermal shocks experience strong temperature gradients that in turn give rise to mechanical stresses that can be large enough to induce fracture. This work presents a complete model for phase-field fracture…
Exotic behaviour of mechanical metamaterials often relies on an internal transformation of the underlying microstructure triggered by its local instabilities, rearrangements, and rotations. Depending on the presence and magnitude of such a…
Most monolithic brittle materials are vulnerable to the failure by cracks because of a lack of intrinsic toughening mechanisms, such as the plasticity in the vicinity of the crack front. As a result, most of the efforts to mitigate the…
Topology optimization (TO) in two dimensions often presents a trade-off between structural performance and manufacturability, with unpenalized (variable-thickness) methods yielding superior but complex designs, and penalized (SIMP) methods…
Ceramics are easy to break, and very few generic mechanisms are available for improving their mechanical properties, e.g., the 1975-discovered anti-fracture mechanism is strictly limited to zirconia and hafnia. Here we report a general…
Designing civil structures such as bridges, dams or buildings is a complex task requiring many synergies from several experts. Each is responsible for different parts of the process. This is often done in a sequential manner, e.g. the…
This work presents a scalable computational framework for optimal design under uncertainty with application to multi-material insulation components of building envelopes. The forward model consists of a multi-phase thermo-mechanical model…
Plasticity is inherent to many engineering materials such as metals. While it can degrade the load-carrying capacity of structures via material yielding, it can also protect structures through plastic energy dissipation. To fully harness…
The conflict between stiffness and toughness is a fundamental problem in engineering materials design. However, the systematic discovery of microstructured composites with optimal stiffness-toughness trade-offs has never been demonstrated,…
Mechanical metamaterials with engineered failure properties typically rely on periodic unit cell geometries or bespoke microstructures to achieve their unique properties. We demonstrate that intelligent use of disorder in metamaterials…
Interest in components with detailed structures increased with the progress in advanced manufacturing techniques in recent years. Parts with graded lattice elements can provide interesting mechanical, thermal, and acoustic properties…
Cracking of rocks and rock-like materials exhibits a rich variety of patterns where tensile (mode I) and shear (mode II) fractures are often interwoven. These mixed-mode fractures are usually cohesive (quasi-brittle) and frictional.…
Brittle materials fail catastrophically. In consequence of their limited flaw-tolerance, failure occurs by localized fracture and is typically a dynamic process. Recently, experiments on epithelial cell monolayers have revealed that this…
This paper presents a computational framework for the robust stiffness design of hyperelastic structures at finite deformations subject to various uncertain sources. In particular, the loading, material properties, and geometry…
Understanding the fracture mechanisms in composite materials across scales, from nano- to micro-scales, is essential for an in-depth understanding of the reinforcement mechanisms and designing the next generation of lightweight,…
An innovative technique, called conversion, is introduced to model circumferential cracks in thin cylindrical shells. The semi-analytical finite element method is applied to investigate the modal deformation of the cylinder. An element…
Enhancing the fracture toughness of diamond while preserving its hardness is a significant challenge. Traditional toughening strategies have primarily focused on modulating the internal microstructural units of diamonds, including…