Episode 544 - Metals recovering from fatigue

Cracks in metal can ultimately lead to fatigue failure, but is there a way to unwind the damage? Fatigue failure is a serious problem for everything from bridges to phones so finding a way to tackle it is important. One microcrack can turn into another as a metal fatigues, but what if the cracks could close themselves up again? Can a metal piece itself back together again? Maybe if its in a vacuum.

1. Christopher M. Barr, Ta Duong, Daniel C. Bufford, Zachary Milne, Abhilash Molkeri, Nathan M. Heckman, David P. Adams, Ankit Srivastava, Khalid Hattar, Michael J. Demkowicz, Brad L. Boyce. Autonomous healing of fatigue cracks via cold welding. Nature, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06223-0