Brittle or quasi-brittle fracture of engineering materials is a wide field of research, which involves many researchers devoted to investigate different aspects of the mechanics and physics of fracture. Materials usually treated include metal alloys, polymers, composites, rocks, and ceramics. Brittle failure is not a phenomenon limited only to static loadings. It may also be related to the fatigue and failure under repeated loading cycles (mechanical or thermal). The material damage process is usually very complex because it involves the combined effects of loading, size and geometry, temperature, and environment. The understanding of the phenomena tied to the dissipation of energy in various forms and the identification of microscopic properties and their interactions with macroscopic variables are the actual challenging topics. The fracture mechanics science emphasises material characterisation techniques and translation of specimen data to design.

We invite authors to submit original research and review articles that seek to define possible criteria against brittle and quasi-brittle failure and to present or discuss new sets of experimental data in combination with fracture assessment. Among the areas to be emphasized are case histories; material selection and structure design; sample calculations of practical design problems; material characterisation procedures; fatigue crack growth and corrosion; nondestructive testing and inspection; structural failure and ageing; failure prevention methodologies; maintenance and repair. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Continuum mechanics
• Crack propagation
• Criteria for fatigue and fracture assessment
• Micromechanics
• Nanomechanics
• Energy absorption and dissipation
• Local approaches based on strain energy density
• Local approaches based on stress analysis
• Scale effect
• Singular stress field
• Interface behavior of small and large bodies
• Three-dimensional effects

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal’s Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amse/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/amse/bqb/ according to the following timetable: