Prevention of unexpected failures represents a non-negotiable design objective in any engineering application. Nevertheless, failures of machines, components, and structures due to fracture and fatigue have not been fully avoided, with some of these failures being catastrophic and involving the loss of human lives. Within the last decades, a great advancement in technology has been achieved. This advancement is associated with the more demanding performance objectives for materials, structures, and machines, and the increased complexity of the engineering products and processes, leading to increased risks for unexpected catastrophic failures involving brittle fracture and fatigue phenomena. On the other hand, such catastrophic failures are not acceptable, thus making the efforts to prevent unexpected failures a cornerstone in modern engineering design and, at the same time, a technological and scientific challenge. There is an increasing acknowledgement that the response to this challenge, that is, prevention of catastrophic failures, can be made manageable only by engaging of a large pool of multidisciplinary expertise considering all the aspects related to the fracture and fatigue of engineering materials.
This special issue of Advanced Engineering Materials, guest edited by Zhe-Feng Zhang (Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, China) and Filippo Berto (University of Padua, Italy), contains 14 selected papers covering different aspects of brittle fracture and fatigue of traditional and advanced materials and making a wide overview on the recent developments. Different theoretical, numerical and experimental advanced aspects have been studied by the authors involved in this SI, considering not only metallic materials but also composites and rubbers.
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In this Review by Dao Lun Chen et al., Mg–Zn–Y series alloys containing I, W, and LPSO phases are critically reviewed. For more details read here.
In this Full Paper by Peter K. Liaw et al. fatigue-crack-growth behavior of two pipeline steels is reported. For more details read here.
In this Full Paper by Filippo Berto et al. the fatigue assessment by means of local strain energy density is reported for advanced materials for applications at high temperature. For more details read here.
In this Full Paper by Zhe-Feng Zhang et al. the low-cycle fatigue behavior and life prediction of copper busbar is investigated.
