Complexity: a new paradigm for fracture mechanics

Complexity: a new paradigm for fracture mechanics

Blog Article

The so-called Complexity Sciences are a topic of fast growing interest inside the scientific community.Actually, researchers did not come to a definition of complexity, since it manifests itself in so many different ways [1].This field itself is not a single discipline, but rather a heterogeneous amalgam of different techniques of mathematics and science.

In orange zinger tomato fact, under the label of Complexity Sciences we comprehend a large variety of approaches: nonlinear dynamics, deterministic chaos theory, nonequilibrium thermodynamics, fractal geometry, intermediate asymptotics, complete and incomplete similarity, renormalization group theory, catastrophe theory, self-organized criticality, neural networks, cellular automata, fuzzy logic, etc.Aim of this paper is at providing insight into the role of complexity in the field of Materials Science and Fracture Mechanics [2-3].The presented examples will be concerned with the caravan scissor jack snap-back instabilities in the structural behaviour of composite structures (Carpinteri [4-6]), the occurrence of fractal patterns and self-similarity in material damage and deformation of heterogeneous materials, and the apparent scaling on the nominal mechanical properties of disordered materials (Carpinteri [7,8]).

Further examples will deal with criticality in the acoustic emissions of damaged structures and with scaling in the time-to-failure (Carpinteri et al.[9]).Eventually, results on the transition towards chaos in the dynamics of cracked beams will be reported (Carpinteri and Pugno [10,11]).