Fracture mechanics and fatigue tests are crucial tests to assess the resistance of materials to crack propagation present and not in the material. These tests help to understand how and when a material can fail under monotonic or cyclic stress conditions over time.

Fracture tests include fracture toughness tests, which measure a material’s resistance to crack propagation, and crack propagation tests, which determine how fast a crack grows under a given stress condition. Fatigue tests, on the other hand, examine a material’ s durability under cyclic loads, assessing the number of cycles a material can withstand before it is damaged.

This evidence is essential for:

• Safety and reliability: preventing sudden failures in critical components.
• Design and maintenance: providing vital data for designing facilities and planning maintenance operations.
• New materials development: testing and improving new materials and alloys to increase their fracture and fatigue resistance.

Fracture mechanics developed in the early 1900s as a result of numerous cases of sudden failure in components and structures stressed at stress levels far below the material limit and without the manifestation of deformation at the macroscopic level.

The growing attention of the industrial world to fracture mechanics has led the SMT Materials Testing Laboratory to invest heavily in this area by equipping itself with servohydraulic machines and vibrophores with the aim of offering a service of excellence.

The SMT Materials Testing Laboratory is equipped with advanced equipment to perform fracture and fatigue tests, including machinery for fracture toughness tests and high-frequency load cycles. Tests are conducted in accordance with international standards to ensure reliable and repeatable results.