Phys.org  February 16, 2022 Over the past century a succession of mechanisms has been hypothesized for structural failures resulting from prolonged low-amplitude loading. By atomistic modeling researchers at Cornell University have shown that sustained fatigue crack growth in vacuum requires emitted dislocations to change slip planes prior to their reabsorption into the crack on the opposite side of the loading cycle. By harnessing a new implementation of a concurrent multiscale method, they assess the validity of long-hypothesized material separation mechanisms thought to control near-threshold fatigue crack growth in vacuum and reconcile reports of crack growth in atomistic simulations at loading […]