For general stress states the fracture locus, under strictly proportional loadings, may be viewed as a two dimensional surface. Deviations from that locus under nonproportional loadings have received limited attention in the literature. The general problem is quite complex because of unavoidably intertwined history effects on both damage-free plasticity and plasticity-induced damage. This work first reports on a systematic attempt at quantifying deviations from the proportional fracture locus given a fracture theory. Two generic types of nonproportional loading are considered, which are believed to represent a heuristic integrity basis for an infinity of possible loading histories. In doing so, emphasis is laid on that component of the deviation associated with damage, thus reducing the representation of plastic flow to its simplest form. The predictive capability of the simple theory is then employed to rationalize experimental trends from the literature.

In digital broadcast TV systems, video data is normally encrypted before transmission. For in-home redistribution, it is often necessary to transcode the bitstream to achieve optimum utilization of available bandwidth. If a signal is decrypted before transcoding and re-encrypted, this may lead to a security loophole. This paper presents a solution in the form of a novel H.264 selective encryption algorithm that encrypts sign bits of transform coefficients and motion vectors to allow secure transcoding without decryption. The performance of this system is compared with I-frame encryption. The results show that sign encryption is more secure than I-frame encryption and has a lower complexity. A hybrid system using a modified transcoder and sign encryption is found to give an optimal compromise between security and transcoding performance.

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This paper presents a novel architecture for the secure delivery of encrypted H.264 SVC bitstreams. It relies on a block cipher and stream cipher used in a novel way that would allow an intermediary transcoder to truncate the bitstream to the appropriate bit-rate without decrypting the data. The system, called SVC-sec, is compared to other architectures presented in the literature and it is shown that SVC-sec offers many benefits, particularly when used with FGS streams.

Fracture of initially crack-free bodies often occurs due to plastic instabilities known as shear bands. Previous computer simulations advanced a myriad of mechanisms to rationalize shear banding. However, they were restricted to planar geometries. We investigate the relevance of anisotropic plasticity by picking an axisymmetric tensile test rig, in which shear localization is rarely observed. The three-dimensional finite-element simulations of shear banding in this type of specimens are the first of their kind. The micromechanical modeling covers a range of competing mechanisms believed to be responsible for such failure. We show that anisotropic plasticity can effectively trigger shear bands thereby causing failure of ductile solids. Our results enable shear fracture to be rationalized in ductile rocks and mitigated against in designing advanced materials.