Center for Fracture Physics

At SRI we have a passion for fracture physics. We love understanding how and why things break, and finding ways to keep them from breaking. (Or in cases like rock quarrying or frozen food grinding, how to break them more efficiently).

For example, we are advancing the state of practice in failure analysis by developing new methods to quantify and analyze fracture surface topography. These methods will allow the history of a crack to be reconstructed and the loading conditions to be retroactively determined.

We are extending the lifetime of aging systems, such as aircraft, power plants, and electronics.

We are inventing ballistic fabrics like Zylon and designing protective structures for commercial aircraft against engine fragments— and police and soldiers against hostile fire.

And when a structure fails, we sleuth out the cause to ensure the failure doesn't happen again.

We are materials scientists, mechanical engineers, computational physicists, and corrosion experts combining our knowledge and experience to advance fracture science and solve failure problems.

Contact Us
Don Shockey
Director, Center for Fracture Physics
Phone: 650-859-2587
Email: donald.shockey@sri.com