Fracture Analysis of Materials Based on Fractal Nature

Dear Colleagues,

It has been observed that the fracture surface of metals, rock, concrete, and many other disordered or heterogeneous materials can be described by fractals characterized by random self-similarity, i.e., they exhibit statistically similar morphologies at different scales of observation. This aspect cannot be ignored or even replaced by a mean field when the fracture analysis of such materials occurs since many length scales interact during the material failure process. In this case, the fundamental character of the phenomenon from a physical and topological point of view can be represented by the fractal description of the material.

Furthermore, it can be explained that the behavior of a material depends on its microstructural disorder and its relation to its size at the macro scale. The microstructural disorder is a scale-independent material property less important when increasing the structural size. From a fractal point of view, this represents the change from a non-integer dimension to an integer dimension, that is, Euclidean space. Various researchers have used this idea to investigate concepts directly or indirectly related to the scale effect, fracture, acoustic emission, and fractality.

This Special Issue focuses on further advancing research on topics related to the fractal approach to the fracture analysis of materials using experimental testing, numerical simulation, and structural health monitoring. Topics that are invited for submission include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Size effect based on the fractal theory;
• Fractal analysis and its applications in fracture mechanics;
• Applications of fractal approaches to fracture failure and damage of materials under different loading conditions;
• Fractal/multi-fractal analysis for structural health monitoring.

Dr. Luis Eduardo Kosteski
Dr. Leandro Ferreira Friedrich
Prof. Dr. Jie Xu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fractal and Fractional is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• size effect
• fracture
• damage
• experimental analysis
• acoustic emission
• numerical simulations