Specially designed fibers are widely used in engineering practice because the specially-designed shape can help to improve the bonding strength of the fiber and the interface. Studied in this paper is the interfacial shear stress transfer behavior on both sides of the specially designed fiber when it is being pulled out; in which automatic analysis of three-dimensional photoelasticity is employed and the finite element method is adopted. The results show that the stress transfer occurs mainly in the region near the fiber's embedded end where the stress reaches its critical point, leading to debonding of the interface. Before debonding, as the pullout loading increases, the peak value of shear stress transfers along the fiber from the embedded end to the interior of the matrix, and then stops at the hooked part of the fiber because of its impediment. When the interface begins to debond as the load increases, the shear stress can be transferred to the hooked part.

SiO2 thin films are widely used in micro-electro-mechanical systems, integrated circuits and optical thin film devices. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to studying the preparation technology and optical properties of SiO2 thin films, but little attention has been paid to their mechanical properties. Herein, the surface morphology of the 500-nm-thick, 1000-nm-thick and 2000-nm-thick SiO2 thin films on the Si substrates was observed by atomic force microscopy. The hardnesses of the three SiO2 thin films with different thicknesses were investigated by nanoindentation technique, and the dependence of the hardness of the SiO2 thin film with its thickness was analyzed. The results showed that the average grain size of SiO2 thin film increased with increasing film thickness. For the three SiO2 thin films with different thicknesses, the same relative penetration depth range of ~0.4–0.5 existed, above which the intrinsic hardness without substrate influence can be determined. The average intrinsic hardness of the SiO2 thin film decreased with the increasing film thickness and average grain size, which showed the similar trend with the Hall-Petch type relationship.

A nanostructured surface layer (NSSL) was generated on a 316L stainless steel plate through surface nanocrystallization (SNC). The grains of the surface layer were refined to nanoscale after SNC treatment. Moreover, the microstructure and mechanical properties of NSSL were analyzed with a transmission electron microscope (TEM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM), through nanoindentation, and through reverse analysis of finite element method (FEM). TEM results showed that the grains in the NSSL measured 8 nm. In addition, these nanocrystalline grains took the form of random crystallographic orientation and were roughly equiaxed in shape. In situ SEM observations of the tensile process confirmed that the motions of the dislocations were determined from within the material and that the motions were blocked by the NSSL, thus improving overall yielding stress. Meanwhile, the nanohardness and the elastic modulus of the NSSL, as well as those of the matrix, were obtained with nanoindentation technology. The reverse analysis of FEM was conducted with MARC software, and the process of nanoindentation on the NSSL and the matrix was simulated. The plastic mechanical properties of NSSL can be derived from the simulation by comparing the results of the simulation and of actual nanoindentation.

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