Hi unclesyd:
Thanks for the suggestion. The interesting findings described in that paper are an extension of the well-known relationship between brittleness and crack propagation.
We did some simple work on this some time ago to demonstrate that ductile fracture travels a few feet per second, while brittle fracture is measured in thousands of feet per second.
When choosing tool steels, we pay careful attention to
fracture toughness that is an indication to the resistance of the material to the onset and growth of cracks. It is
different from impact toughness which is given in most
specs and reported as IZOD or Charpy V-notch.