High speed experiments show what happens when polymer liquids crackA small team of researchers with
High speed experiments show what happens when polymer liquids crackA small team of researchers with the Technical University of Denmark and Drexel University in the U.S. has found that it is possible to cause a liquid to crack under the right conditions. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the team describes their experiments, what they learned and outline ways in which their findings may be suitable for use in industrial applications in the future.A lot of study has been done regarding cracks in solid materials to learn what causes them, how to prevent them, etc. Doing so has helped to create materials that better suit our purposes and which are, in some cases, safer for us to use, e.g. for airplane components. But up till now, little work has been done to study cracks in liquids, in part because it would seem logical to assume that they don’t exist. But as the researchers with this new effort found, they not only do exist, but take on many of the same properties as cracks that occur and propagate through solid materials.Read more. -- source link
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