In structural engineering

Structural engineering

Structural engineering is a field of engineering dealing with the analysis and design of structures that support or resist loads. Structural engineering is usually considered a specialty within civil engineering, but it can also be studied in its own right....

 and material science, fast fracture is a term given to a phenomenon in which a flaw (such as a crack) in a material

Material

Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. Wood, cement, hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term "material" is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties that are used as inputs to...

 expands quickly, and leads to catastrophic failure

Catastrophic failure

A catastrophic failure is a sudden and total failure of some system from which recovery is impossible. Catastrophic failures often lead to cascading systems failure....

 of the material. Stress

Stress (physics)

In continuum mechanics, stress is a measure of the internal forces acting within a deformable body. Quantitatively, it is a measure of the average force per unit area of a surface within the body on which internal forces act. These internal forces are a reaction to external forces applied on the body...

 acting on a material when fast fracture occurs is less than the material's yield stress

Yield (engineering)

The yield strength or yield point of a material is defined in engineering and materials science as the stress at which a material begins to deform plastically. Prior to the yield point the material will deform elastically and will return to its original shape when the applied stress is removed...

. A very representative example of this is what happens when poking a blown up balloon with a needle, that is, fast fracture of the balloon's material.

See also

• Yield (engineering)
  Yield (engineering)
  The yield strength or yield point of a material is defined in engineering and materials science as the stress at which a material begins to deform plastically. Prior to the yield point the material will deform elastically and will return to its original shape when the applied stress is removed...
  
  
• Plastic collapse
• Indentation (engineering)