Application and Development of Fracture Mechanics in Yugoslavia

Abstract

The intensive industrial development in Yugoslavia during the last decades has been followed by a corresponding development of science, research and testing in the field of materials and structures, particularly in the sphere of direct industrial application. Heavy equipment and welded structures industry has required constructions to be fracture safe, so the application of fracture mechanics has become an inevitable consequence. In the industrial practice, fracture mechanics was at first applied to special cases and what is characteristic, research work at institutes and universities has taken rise much later in the late seventies. Only in that recent period, the connection between researchers in the field of materials and structures, on one hand, and both steel and other alloys and equipment producers, on the other hand, has been realized and that could be marked as a time of more complete development of fracture mechanics in Yugoslavia.