S. Beretta's blog

In a cooperative research between PoliMi and UIUC we have analyzed the crack growth in Ni-based single crystals:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142112316000840

 Crack growth experiments analyzed with DIC had shown relatively low closure levels respect to polycrystals. Crystal plasticity simulations with WARP3D have been able to simulate closure levels consistent with the experimental ones.

The ESIS Technical Committee 24 provides a forum for researchers and engineers who deal with structural integrity problems in modern railway system. During our latest meeting, held on 1-2 October 2014 at Politecnico di Milano, excellent talks presented results obtained within different research projects, including  EURAXLES - EBFW3  and SUSTRAIL.

A position of associate professor is available for foreign scientists at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Politecnico di Milano (Milano, Italy). Details can be found at: http://www.AcademicKeys.com/r?job=57802 

Failure of railway axles has been the problem which gave origin to the studies about 'fatigue'. The modern approach to the structural integrity of these safety components is to complement the traditional designwith a 'damage toleranc' analysis.

In the last decade, different
cyclic plasticity models, based on the “continuum” approach, have been proposed
in order to account for different mechanical effects (such as ratchetting,
strain range dependence, non-proportional loading and memory effect), [1, 2]. A
disadvantage of this approach is the elevated number of model parameters
introduced in order to correctly predict the material behaviour. The determination
of these parameters, usually difficult and expensive, is one of the reasons why the modern
constitutive models are not widely used in finite element simulations of

Raiway axle failures have been the starting point for the studies on fatigue. However, recent accidents and papers (see [1] by Hoddinott) have shown that corrosion-fatigue plays a significant role.

At PoliMi we have recently investigated this topic finding interesting results by corrosion-fatigue tests on small-scale specimens and, recently, a validation of the model by full-scale corrosion-fatigue tests (see papers [2-3]).