Mechanics of materials: top-down approaches to fracture

The utility and robustness of the mechanics of materials is illustrated through a review of several recent applications to fracture phenomena, including adhesive failures, the role of plasticity in enhancing toughness in films and multilayers, and crack growth resistance in ductile structural alloys. The commonalty among the approaches rests in a reliance on experiments to provide calibration of the failure process at the smallest scale.