Achievement

IGERT Trainee Cynthia Zingale has been studying the strain-rate dependent behavior of cementitious materials with spherical flaws. In this work she is applying expertise from Prof. Ramesh of Mechanical Engineering on dynamic failure of ceramics to the realm of cementitious materials with her primary advisor Prof. Graham-Brady of Civil Engineering. Cynthia's work shows that spherical flaws such as pores are critical to strength only when the size of the flaws is large; however, smaller flaws become critical at very high strain rates. Prior work on slit-like, or crack-like, flaws in ceramics shows much more sensitivity for small-scale flaws. A future model that is more realistic will include both slit-like flaws that are small-scale (like those that would be found along grain boundaries) and spherical flaws that are large-scale (like pores or inclusions).