Fracture and understanding why it occurs is an integral part of materials science and engineering. But what causes fracture to happen? Do different materials fracture in different ways? Can we predict how materials will fail so we can design around it? This module covers these topics and more. The lab uses cheese to visualize the physical differences between ductile and brittle fracture and finite element analysis simulations from Nanohub to simulate stress concentrations at crack tips. Note there are two ways to run this lab: one with the simulation first and one with the experiment first. Handouts covering both ways are available for download.
Facilities needed: Classroom, computer lab with internet access
Additional items needed: Nanohub accounts (free with an email address)
Keywords: Fracture, ductile, brittle, cheese, oof2, finite element analysis, stress concentration
Files to Download:
- Fracture Module
- Fracture Lecture (PPT)
- Fracture Lecture Notes
- Lab- Experiment First
- Lab- Simulation First
- Crack script files (zip)
- Crack png files (zip)
- All files (zip)
Additional Links:
Lecture with Audio Below:
Girls Learning About Materials by Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.