DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - any engineers care to try explaining this please?

**ceagstuntee** · 08-14-2012, 04:59 AM

> any engineers care to try explaining this please?

The bonding of atoms in a solid is to a large extent electrostatic. Linus Pauling showed that even covalent bonds have an electrostatic energy component.

The opposite edges of a crack carry electrical charges. These will tend to hinder crack development if of opposite charge (by drawing the opposite faces of a crack together) but enhance it if of like charge, locally on the atom-by-atom scale. What this means is that combining mechanical and electrical loading can have a different effect to that of mechanical loading alone. I take it that this is what is meant by "Effect of electrostatic tractions on the fracture behavior of a dielectric material under mechanical and/or electric loading".

08-14-2012, 04:59 AM	#11
ceagstuntee Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 421 Senior Member	> any engineers care to try explaining this please? The bonding of atoms in a solid is to a large extent electrostatic. Linus Pauling showed that even covalent bonds have an electrostatic energy component. The opposite edges of a crack carry electrical charges. These will tend to hinder crack development if of opposite charge (by drawing the opposite faces of a crack together) but enhance it if of like charge, locally on the atom-by-atom scale. What this means is that combining mechanical and electrical loading can have a different effect to that of mechanical loading alone. I take it that this is what is meant by "Effect of electrostatic tractions on the fracture behavior of a dielectric material under mechanical and/or electric loading".
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