Fatigue Fracture
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Fatigue fracture - elastic stresses that lead to catatrophic breaks
Take a paperclip and bend it back and forth. Eventually, it snaps — often without warning.
This is how many metals fail: suddenly and catastrophically. This phenomenon is called fatigue fracture.
One of the most famous examples is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse of 1940.
I explored this topic with Professor Arun Jaganathan.
Our goal: develop non-invasive methods to detect structural anomalies that compromise integrity and predict the remaining lifespan of a structure.
Fatigue fractures often occur without visible warning. Research in this field focuses on non-invasive detection of structural anomalies and predicting failure before it happens.
Although our project was not funded, I was excited to see that my undergraduate research advisor, Professor Gabriela Petculescu, recently received a grant to develop efficient methods for determining the aging of Navy ships.
