Nanostructured materials commonly excel with respect to their strength, but their ductility and toughness remain limiting factors for deployment in safety related applications. In this work, using grain boundary engineering concepts in conjunction with severe plastic deformation for microstructural refinement, we aim to develop nanostructured and nanocomposite materials that overcome these limitations. Since material volumes are limited, we utilize small scale testing approaches to examine the respective material properties such as strength, ductility and fracture toughness. We detail on the one hand challenges and recent advancements in small scale fracture experiments, and on the other hand the effectiveness of the mentioned grain boundary engineering approaches to design outstanding nanomaterials overcoming strength-ductility-toughness limitations.
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