By Tom Irvine While enjoying a glass of orange juice at an outdoor café in Madeira, Portugal on a sunny Independence Day morning, I noticed the reusable stainless steel straw resting across the glass — its elegant curved bend a perfect reminder that one of… Read more
Photograph taken at a seaside retaining wall in Madeira, Portugal, July 2026. The bolt and nut shown are carbon steel — heavily corroded after prolonged exposure to the Atlantic marine environment.Figure 1. Severely corroded carbon steel bolt and nut at a seaside retaining wall, Madeira,… Read more
A6061-RAM2 is a new aluminum alloy developed specifically for additive manufacturing (AM) that achieves mechanical properties comparable to wrought 6061-T6 — a capability that has eluded conventional AM processes for decades. Developed by Elementum 3D using Reactive Additive Manufacturing (RAM) technology and matured by NASA… Read more
Introduction A previous VibrationData post examined cold dwell fatigue in titanium — the phenomenon in which simply holding a moderate stress for one to two minutes causes far more damage per cycle than the same stress applied and immediately removed. The mechanism is driven by… Read more
Question: What is meant exactly by “fatigue exponent”. I generally input a value between 3 (for notched parts) and 6 (for (unnotched ones). Is it right?…I’ve found confusing and contrasting definitions about b and m exponent (among MIL-STD-810 G and various other documents) Answer:… Read more