Interesting topics of material fracture/deformation?

[ENGBIO]

What are some interesting topics in the field of material fracture and deformation? Maybe a newer area of research?

 

[Astronuc]

What are some interesting topics in the field of material fracture and deformation? Maybe a newer area of research?

That's a rather broad subject area, since one can focus on particular types of materials, e.g., aluminum alloys, copper alloys, steels and stainless steels, nickel or cobalt alloys, ceramics, cermets, composites, plastics/polymers, glasses, . . . . , and even specific alloy systems, e.g., austenitic, ferritic, martensitic or duplex alloy systems.

One can browse a journal such as the International Journal of Fracture and find the latest topics of interest, e.g.,
Influence of grain boundary misorientation on intergranular fracture
A numerical study on bifurcations in multi-void growth in nonlinear elasticity

There is a lot of work with phase field modeling and density functional theory.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21663831.2017.1414081
https://www.csun.edu/sites/default/files/prem_lu_26.pdf

https://prod.sandia.gov/techlib-noauth/access-control.cgi/2015/1510305r.pdf

Simulating the elastic-plastic (including visco-elasticity and visco-plasticity) has become critical.
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9780792348955

Then there are areas of stress-corrosion cracking (particularly intergranular stress corrosion cracking (IGSCC)) and in the nuclear reactor environment, irradiation-assisted stress corrosion cracking (IASCC). In order to obtain greater efficiency from power systems, engineers want to increase temperature and stress, but have to balance those requirements against creep, corrosion, fatigue and fracture. In a given alloy system, there is still a need to understand the influence of composition (and microstructure), even down to individual elements (including impurities), on the elastic-plastic behavior, and fracture toughness, of the particular alloy in its intended service environment.