Cracking dams intro

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Do you see cracks everyday?



Lots of things crack, some just a little, and some a whole lot. You probably see cracks everyday, in the sidewalk, in a building like this one, in a window, or maybe in a bone.
If you ever broke a bone, they may have called the break a fracture. Fracture is another word for cracking or a crack.

broken arm courtesy of the Scharles


Fracture mechanics is the study of how cracks start, grow, and (hopefully) stop.

It is important to study how cracks behave because cracks can cause things to fail, something as small as a bone or as large as a ship. If a large structure, such as a building or a ship, cracks, this may lead to a catastrophic (*) failure which could affect many people.

To aid in the study of fracture mechanics, people have developed computer programs which allow them to simulate how cracks might grow in different structures, such as the body of an airplane or in a concrete dam.



This is a computer model of the fuselage (*) of an airplane. The red line is a crack.
Watch the crack grow under pressure.

animation courtesy of David Chen (#)




What kind of materials crack?


Cracks intro Materials that fracture