Current state-of-the-art of UFLP

Abstract

The unified approach can mean different things to different people. Crupi (2008) has introduced a unifying approach to assess the structural strength in which different failure modes have been unified. The basic concept is that the energy stored and required to produce the structural failure is a material property independent of the loading conditions. Several relationships were used to correlate different mechanical properties and were validated by experimental results. The developed theoretical model was focused on damping, a material property able to correlate vibration parameters with high cycle fatigue parameters and related to the damage of materials and structures. The measure of damping is based on experimental techniques currently used for damage detection, so this unifying approach could be applied also to structural health monitoring. Good predictions were achieved by applying the new approach to structural details of ships. Lo, et al. (1996) presented a unified model as a natural extension as well as a generalization of Irwin’s concept for mixed mode SIFs (K Iθ, K IIθ). These unifications are not the main considerations of this book so they are not discussed further.