One of my professor-type colleagues recently asked me to start reviewing some scholarly articles for a materials-engineering journal where he serves as an editorial board member. It has been interesting

In this second part, we conclude the discussion of hydrogen embrittlement.

There are probably few types of metallurgical damage that have as much misinformation swirling around as hydrogen embrittlement.

Sometimes the transverse fracture planes of a ductile torsional crack are readily identifiable.

Torsion is the name for the loading geometry experienced by the shaft of a screwdriver as the tip is held in the slot of a screw and the operator twists the handle (the important part here) while pushing down to drive the screw.

In the last entry, we saw several photos of parts that were broken due to loads applied to a long skinny part in a way that caused the part to bend, initially creating a crack perpendicular to the length of the part.

Figure 1 In an earlier entry, we saw that bending is one of the basic loading geometries. In Figure 1, we create three-point bending in a simple beam by pushing

In tensile loading, crack-opening stresses create cracks that are perpendicular to the loading direction.

What is required to understand how to tell the difference between a macro-scale ductile and a macro-scale brittle crack is a basic understanding of whether shear (sliding) or normal (crack

In earlier columns, we looked at some photos of broken parts to gain an appreciation for the fact that ductile and brittle fractures may be more complicated than the commonly