Art in Fracture: The making of the new cover for Theoretical and Applied Fracture Mechanics

Readers will have noticed that this journal has a new cover. Early in 2013, Luca Susmel contacted me, asking if I would be interested in painting a picture to be used as part of the cover design. As a researcher in the field of fracture mechanics, with pretensions towards being an artist, I was very glad to accept the challenge. This article describes the discussions and activities that went into the making of the finished piece of work. At the start, Luca and I exchanged ideas about what would be required, trying to find a set of criteria for the project. How to represent the work and aims of the journal, and the broader topic of fracture mechanics, in both its theoretical and applied aspects? Examples of works of art were exchanged, including paintings from the Futurist and Cubist movements which expressed positive images of industrial and scientific progress and also incorporated fractured picture planes and interrupted images. I also looked at the covers of other journals. Many journal covers are very simple and, quite frankly, rather boring, but some are very inspiring. For example the juxtaposed images on the cover of Medical Hypotheses and the lively, mobile graphic design of Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Two requirements became clear from an early stage. Firstly, there should be a crack in the picture. Cracks are so central to fracture mechanics: the very idea that materials fail by cracking is the defining concept which marks the emergence of our subject. The understanding of crack initiation and growth continues to be a major research activity. Secondly, whatever image was created would have to ‘‘work’’ not only in its full size on the cover of the printed journal, but also in the reduced size at which it appears on the website and on the title page of each individual paper. These days very few people have the printed journal in their hands, so the small image has become all the more important as a representation of the journal. Work began with sketches using pencil, charcoal, ink and watercolours. Initially, many different ideas were considered: Fig. 1 shows a selection of these. The idea of showing examples of modern engineering – aircraft, ships, buildings, etc. – with an introduced element of fracture, seemed an attractive concept, but my pictures just kept coming out like posters for a disaster movie! Fracture mechanics test specimens can make nice graphic images with their strong geometric shapes (see Fig. 2) but the result showed nothing of the theoretical side of our subject. I realised that bringing in the idea of theoretical research was a key problem to solve. So how to express the idea of theory in a visual form?