It sounds like amorphous metals may be a fruitful avenue of research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 3:45 PM, a.ashfield <a.ashfi...@verizon.net> wrote: > Someone asked about crack formation. What work I have done was to > prevent them rather than make them. > > Basically you heat the object up and then cool the surface sufficiently > rapidly that a tensile stress is created that exceeds the tensile strength > of the material. Much easier to do with non ductile materials like glass. > Glass is rather strange. Even if you make a crack free surface, contact > with anything from dust to say touching with a paper handkerchief will > cause cracks. A typical glass tumbler has 70,000 cracks per sq.cm. So > polishing might also be a method. > > >
