The rolling bearings used in various industrial applications are exposed to fatigue failure during their operation. Generally, in a practical application, the ISO 281:2007 standard is used for fatigue life assessments of rolling bearings. The application of the formula given in this standard requires knowledge concerning the basic dynamic load rating C. The natural question is raised of whether it is possible to omit the time-consuming experimental tests while still effectively calculating the fatigue load or the load capacity of the bearings. In the paper, the authors propose the application of analytical formulas for stresses in the contact area and its vicinity, and the usage of the multiaxial high-cycle fatigue hypothesis to estimate the maximal fatigue load for the rolling bearings. In the proposed methodology, only the knowledge concerning the fatigue properties of the material and geometry characteristics of the analyzed bearings are demanded. The effectiveness of the authors’ proposal is verified for arbitrarily chosen bearings. The observed discrepancy between the catalogue fatigue load (SKF catalogue) and numerically calculated fatigue load usually does not exceed 10%, which is fully acceptable from an engineering point of view and justifies the approach proposed in the paper. The proposed methodology can be used for the prediction of the fatigue life and optimization of the rolling bearings.

The paper presents the assessment of the possibility and reliability of the digital image correlation (DIC) system for engineering and scientific purposes. The studies were performed with the use of samples made of the three different materials—mild S235JR + N steel, microalloyed fine-grain S355MC steel, and high strength 41Cr4 steel subjected to different heat-treatment. The DIC studies were focused on determinations of dangerous zones with large stress concentrations, plastic deformation growth, and prediction of the failure zone. Experimental tests were carried out for samples with different notches (circular, square, and triangular openings). With the use of the DIC system and microstructure analyses, the influence of different factors (laser cutting, heat treatment, material type, notch shape, and manufacturing quality) on the material behavior were studied. For all studied cases, the stress concentration factors (SCF) were estimated with the use of the analytical formulation and the finite element analysis. It was observed that the theoretical models for calculations of the influence of the typical notches may result in not proper values of SCFs. Finally, the selected results of the total strain distributions were compared with FEM results, and good agreement was observed. All these allow the authors to conclude that the application of DIC with a common digital camera can be effectively applied for the analysis of the evolution of plastic zones and the damage detection for mild high-strength steels, as well as those normalized and quenched and tempered at higher temperatures.

The EUROnu project has studied three possible options for future, high intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe. The first is a Super Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of pions created by bombarding targets with a 4 MW proton beam from the CERN High Power Superconducting Proton Linac. The far detector for this facility is the 500 kt MEMPHYS water Cherenkov, located in the Fréjus tunnel. The second facility is the Neutrino Factory, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of and beams in a storage ring. The far detector in this case is a 100 kt magnetized iron neutrino detector at a baseline of 2000 km. The third option is a Beta Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of beta emitting isotopes, in particular and , also stored in a ring. The far detector is also the MEMPHYS detector in the Fréjus tunnel. EUROnu has undertaken conceptual designs of these facilities and studied the performance of the detectors. Based on this, it has determined the physics reach of each facility, in particular for the measurement of violation in the lepton sector, and estimated the cost of construction. These have demonstrated that the best facility to build is the Neutrino Factory. However, if a powerful proton driver is constructed for another purpose or if the MEMPHYS detector is built for astroparticle physics, the Super Beam also becomes very attractive.

ESSnuSB is a design study for an experiment to measure the CP violation in the leptonic sector at the second neutrino oscillation maximum using a neutrino beam driven by the uniquely powerful ESS linear accelerator. The reduced impact of systematic errors on sensitivity at the second maximum allows for a very precise measurement of the CP violating parameter. This review describes the fundamental advantages of measurement at the second maximum, the necessary upgrades to the ESS linac in order to produce a neutrino beam, the near and far detector complexes, and the expected physics reach of the proposed ESSnuSB experiment, concluding with the near future developments aimed at the project realization.

The application of the digital image correlation (DIC) contactless method has extended the possibilities of reliable assessment of structure strain fields and deformations throughout the last years. However, certain weak points in the analyses using the DIC method still exist. The fluctuations of the results caused by different factors as well as certain deficiencies in the evaluation of DIC accuracy in applications for hybrid steel/composite structures with adhesive joints are one of them. In the proposed paper, the assessment of DIC accuracy based on the range of strain fluctuation is proposed. This relies on the use of a polynomial approximation imposed on the results obtained from the DIC method. Such a proposal has been used for a certain correction of the DIC solution and has been verified by the introduction of different error measures. The evaluation of DIC possibilities and accuracy are presented on the examples of the static tensile tests of adhesively bonded steel/composite joints with three different adhesives applied. The obtained results clearly show that in a non-disturbed area, very good agreement between approximated DIC and FEM results is achieved. The relative average errors in an area, determined by comparison of DIC and FEM strains, are below 15%. It is also observed that the use of approximated strains by polynomial function leads to a more accurate solution with respect to FEM results. It is concluded that DIC can be successfully applied for the analyses of hybrid steel/adhesive/composite samples, such as determination of strain fields, non-contact visual detection of faults of manufacturing and their development and influence on the whole structure behavior during the strength tests, including the elastic response of materials.