A transgranular fracture is a

fracture Fracture is the separation of an object or material into two or more pieces under the action of stress. The fracture of a solid usually occurs due to the development of certain displacement discontinuity surfaces within the solid. If a displa ...

that follows the edges of

lattice Lattice may refer to: Arts and design * Latticework, an ornamental criss-crossed framework, an arrangement of crossing laths or other thin strips of material * Lattice (music), an organized grid model of pitch ratios * Lattice (pastry), an ornam ...

s in a

granular material A granular material is a conglomeration of discrete solid, macroscopic particles characterized by a loss of energy whenever the particles interact (the most common example would be friction when grains collide). The constituents that compose gra ...

, ignoring the

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legum ...

s in the individual lattices. This results in a fairly smooth looking fracture with fewer sharp edges than one that follows the changing grains. This can be visualized as several wooden

jigsaw puzzle A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often irregularly shaped interlocking and mosaiced pieces, each of which typically has a portion of a picture. When assembled, the puzzle pieces produce a complete picture. In th ...

pieces with the grains showing, but with each piece having grains running in a different direction. A transgranular fracture follows the grains in the wood, not the edges of the puzzle pieces. This is opposed to an

intergranular fracture Intergranular fracture, intergranular cracking or intergranular embrittlement occurs when a crack propagates along the grain boundaries of a material, usually when these grain boundaries are weakened.Norman E. Dowling, Mechanical Behavior of Materi ...

References

Granularity of materials Fracture mechanics {{materials-sci-stub