This image for Sandia National Laboratories’ Brittle Materials Assurance Prediction Program illustrates the microstructure of a brittle material as seen through a scanning electron microscope, left, and a graphic showing the grain orientation of that microstructure. (Credit: Sandia National Laboratories)

Figuring out how brittle materials inside a device behave, and fail, is one goal of Sandia National Laboratories’ Brittle Materials Assurance Prediction Program (BritMAPP). The program, which runs until 2020, studies brittle materials in three ways: stress and loading; fracture mechanics to see how cracks start and develop; and the relationship between material properties and structure. They focus on how sudden failure affects the performance, reliability, and safety of components and systems where breaking has serious consequences, such as medical devices.

Sandia wants to develop the science, technology, and understanding to ensure that brittle components in high-consequence systems remain fully functional over a 30-year lifespan. BritMAPP researchers are developing mechanics models and discovering fundamental property and structure relationships so they can shift from qualitative engineering judgment to quantitative predictions of brittle material failure and reliability.

Since it’s not possible to test every possible scenario, researchers gather data for computer models through laboratory experiments, measuring materials properties to understand how things behave. Modelers make a computer representation of an object and then apply physical laws to predict how the materials behave mechanically: what happens when they’re stretched or squeezed.

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Topics:
Medical

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