Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue covers the newest outcomes and trends in damage detection, identification and modeling in the case of modern engineering materials. The invitation to submit outstanding articles is addressed to a wide group of scientists and engineers working on new methods for material characterization for fracture toughness, damage evolution and damage tolerance—the factors having direct effects on the safety of the service of highly responsible structures.

The materials in focus are layered structures (FRPs, FMLs and sandwiches), particle-reinforced composites, smart materials (SMAs and PZTs), foams, ceramics, 3D printed materials and others. In consequence, both brittle and ductile fracture phenomena can be discussed, and both quasi-static and dynamic phenomena may be studied.

Any of the techniques for damage detection or identification in real time, such as wave propagation analysis (acoustic emission and Lamb waves) are in the area of interest. On the other hand, there are many post-failure exploration techniques—fractography, tomography and ultrasonics—helpful for the efficient identification of various types of defects and inference of damage evolution. All these approaches are welcome in this Special Issue as potentially advantageous in the process of engineering materials’ development and able to induce progress in the field of damage mechanics.

Last but not least, an aspect of the aforementioned problems is advancement in modeling techniques, usually implemented in the Finite Element codes and useful in the evaluation of strength, stability and failure criteria—prior to physical experiments. The progress in numerical methods is very important in the further expansion of modern engineering materials.

Assoc. Prof. Sylwester Samborski
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Delamination
• Fracture toughness
• Health monitoring
• Damage tolerance
• Damage evolution
• Elastic wave propagation
• Acoustic emission
• Finite element modeling