Fracture statistics of brittle materials at micro- and nano-scales

Abstract

Abstract In contrast to their bulk samples, there seems no obvious size effect on the strength of brittle materials at micro- and nano-scales although some degree of scatter exists in experimental measurements. In this paper, current advances on the statistical analysis of available strength data of materials at micro- and nano-scales have been briefly reviewed. It is shown that, by means of a minimum information criterion, a better statistical model can be selected for quantifying the intrinsic mechanical properties of micro- and nanostructured materials and further applied for extracting the optimal information from those imperfect experimental data obtained with recently nano-mechanical testing techniques. Also discussed is the defect tolerance of brittle materials at micro- and nano-scales, which may be due to the collective interaction of flaws in a non-traditional sense.