title: An extension of fracture mechanics/technology to larger and smaller cracks/defects.
abstract: Fracture mechanics/technology is a key science and technology for the design and integrity assessment of the engineering structures. However, the conventional fracture mechanics has mostly targeted a limited size of cracks/defects, say of from several hundred microns to several tens of centimeters. The author and his group has tried to extend that limited size and establish a new version of fracture technology for very large cracks used in geothermal energy extraction and for very small cracks/defects or damage often appearing in the combination of mechanical and electronic components of engineering structures. Those new versions are reviewed in this paper.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Aoba 6-6-01, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8579, Japan. abe@abe.mech.tohoku.ac.jp
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Abé
mesh_terms: D004581:Electronics; D004738:Engineering; D015775:Fractures, Stress; D008422:Materials Testing; D019563:Mechanics; D013673:Technology Assessment, Biomedical