No Risk No Progress—A Quick Tour Focusing on Materials and Structures

Starting with reference to the Farmer’s diagram and its association with the early steps of the civil nuclear industry, the notion of risk—a measure of the likelihood that damage occurs as a result of a particular hazard—will be discussed in this paper. Important problems to be avoided or mitigated in materials and structures are related to damage, including sudden occurrences as brittle fractures or time-dependent phenomena as fatigue. Fracture mechanics emerged in the last century as an indispensable tool to deal with those problems, and no wonder that was early appreciated by the technical and the insurance communities. Some aspects of fracture mechanics will be recalled, including reference to methodologies as round robin programs and blind predictions, or the occasional interest for self-healing materials. Examples of the use of fracture mechanics for failure analyses and fracture avoidance will be discussed through cases chosen from a variety of contexts, from old metallic bridges to current large passenger aircraft. Trends for sustainability will be mentioned, particularly the emergence of the notion of digital twin with application in a variety of fields as aeronautics and civil engineering structures among others.