The International Conference on Fracture Mechanics in Engineering Applica tion convened at the r ational Aeronautical Laboratory (NAL) in Bangalore, India, March 26-30, 1979, with the presence of approximately 400 scientists and engi neers. The participants included individuals from all parts of India, United States of America, United Kingdom, Japan, Holland, France, Hong Kong, Korea, Sweden and Poland. The Conference was organized jointly by NAL, Bangalore;and Lehigh University, USA. Various organizations in India have also supported the Conference most generously. Professor S. Dhawan,...

Experiments on fracture of materials are made for various purposes. Of primary importance are those through which criteria predicting material failure by deformation and/or fracture are investigated. Since the demands of engineering application always precede the development of theories, there is another kind of experiment where conditions under which a particular material can fail are simulated as closely as possible to the operational situation but in a simplified and standardized form. In this way, many of the parameters corresponding to fracture such as toughness, Charpy values, crack...

An International Conference on the Application of Fracture Mechanics to Ma terials and Structures was held at the Hotel Kolpinghaus in Freiburg, West Ger many, June 20-24, 1983. It was attended by more than 250 participants from different countries which include Austria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Democratic Republic of Germany, Denmark, Federal Republic of Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, People's Republic of China, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States of America, USSR and Yugoslavia. Conference Co-Chairmen were...

The assessment of crack initiation and/or propagation has been the subject of many past discussions on fracture mechanics. Depending on how the chosen failure criterion is combined with the solution of a particular theory of continuum mechanics, the outcome could vary over a wide range. Mod elling of the material damage process could be elusive if the scale level of observation is left undefined. The specification of physical dimension alone is not sufficient because time and temperature also play an intimate role. It is only when the latter two variables are fixed that failure predictions...

The International Conference on Fracture Mechanics Technology Applied to Material Evaluation and Structure Design was held in Melbourne, Australia, from August 10 to 13, 1982. It was sponsored jointly by the Australian Fracture Group and Institute of Fracture and Solid Mechanics at Lehigh University. Pro fessor G. C. Sih of Lehigh University, Drs. N. E. Ryan and R. Jones of Aeronau tical Research Laboratories served as Co-Chairmen. They initiated the organiza tion of this international event to provide an opportunity for the practitioners, engineers and interested individuals to present and...

The Second USA-USSR Symposium on Fna e 06 Compo e Mat a h took place at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, during 9-12 March, 1981. This bilateral program between the U. S. and Soviet Union was organized by Professor George C. Sih of the Institute of Fracture and Solid Mechanics at Lehigh Uni versity and Dr. Vitauts P. Tamuzs of the Institute of Polymer Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR in Riga. The First Symposium was held in 1978 at Jurmala near the coast of Riga Bay. The primary reasons for initiating this series of Symposia were to dissemi nate present...

This International Conference on Analytical and Experimental Fracture Me chanics was organized jointly by the Centro Sperimentale Metallurgico, S. p. A., Lehigh University and Italsider S. p. A. It took place at the Hotel Midas Palace in Rome, Italy, during 23-27 June, 1980. There were more than 150 attendees from 19 different countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, People's Re public of China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Federal Republic of Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA and USSR. Dr. G. M. Costa from Finsider officially...

The International Conference on Fracture Mechanics in Engineering Applica tion convened at the r ational Aeronautical Laboratory (NAL) in Bangalore, India, March 26-30, 1979, with the presence of approximately 400 scientists and engi neers. The participants included individuals from all parts of India, United States of America, United Kingdom, Japan, Holland, France, Hong Kong, Korea, Sweden and Poland. The Conference was organized jointly by NAL, Bangalore;and Lehigh University, USA. Various organizations in India have also supported the Conference most generously. Professor S. Dhawan,...

This third volume of a series on Mechanies of Fraeture deals with eraeks in plates and shelIs. It was noted in Volume 2 on three-dimensional eraek problems that additional free surfaees can lead to substantial mathematical complexities, often making the analysis unmanageable. The theory of plates and shelIs forms a part of the theory of elasticity in which eertain physieal assumptions are made on the basis that the distanee between two bounded surfaees, either fiat or eurved, is small in eomparison with the overall dimen- sions of the body. In modern times, the broad and frequent applieations...

More than six years ago, several of Rabotnov's close friends and colleagues from the USSR and USA decided to contribute a volume on Plasticity and Failure of Solids in honor of his 70th birthday. The celebration was interrupted unexpectedly by his death on May 13, 1985 at which time another decision was made still to publish the work, but as a memorial volume. As in any field of scientific endeavor, research confronts the scientists with anomalies; our chosen area is no exception. The ways in which failure criteria and plasticity theory are combined can differ widely among the researchers;...