Publications by authors named "Colin Atkinson"

We present a simplified, rapid, and accurate method for the measurement of the thermoelectric Thomson coefficient by the dynamical heating of a suspended wire by an alternating current. By applying a temperature gradient across the wire, we find that the response at the second harmonic of the excitation frequency is directly proportional to the Thomson coefficient. The absolute thermoelectric coefficient of a single material can therefore be extracted with high precision by using a phase sensitive detector.

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The degree of surface roughness and clarity with which a surface in a brittle material can be formed via fracture is known to be related to the speed of the propagating crack. Cracks traversing a brittle material at low speed produce very smooth surfaces, while those propagating faster create less reflective and rough surfaces (Buehler MJ, Gao H. 2006 Nature 439, 307-310 (doi:10.

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An assessment is made here of the role played by the micropolar continuum theory on the cracked Brazilian disc test used for determining rock fracture toughness. By analytically solving the corresponding mixed boundary-value problems and employing singular-perturbation arguments, we provide closed-form expressions for the energy release rate and the corresponding stress-intensity factors for both mode I and mode II loading. These theoretical results are augmented by a set of fracture toughness experiments on both sandstone and marble rocks.

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