Spall

Spall are flakes of a material that are broken off a larger solid body and can be produced by a variety of mechanisms, including as a result of projectile impact, corrosion, weathering, cavitation, or excessive rolling pressure (as in a ball bearing). Spalling and spallation both describe the process of surface failure in which spall is shed.

The terms spall and spalling have been adopted by particle physicists; in neutron scattering instruments, neutrons are generated by bombarding a uranium target with a stream of atoms. The neutrons that are ejected from the target are known as spall.