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Lecture 5.3 Fracture

The document discusses fracture and toughness in polymers. It explains that polymers can exhibit a wide range of stress-strain behaviors from brittle to highly deformable. The area under the stress-strain curve is a measure of a material's toughness. Brittle polymers fracture through the formation of crazes, which are stabilized by molecular entanglements. Fracture resistance can be increased by adding rubber particles or through the use of fracture mechanics, which examines the energy required for crack propagation.

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Fatimah Binti Abd Rahman
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95 views

Lecture 5.3 Fracture

The document discusses fracture and toughness in polymers. It explains that polymers can exhibit a wide range of stress-strain behaviors from brittle to highly deformable. The area under the stress-strain curve is a measure of a material's toughness. Brittle polymers fracture through the formation of crazes, which are stabilized by molecular entanglements. Fracture resistance can be increased by adding rubber particles or through the use of fracture mechanics, which examines the energy required for crack propagation.

Uploaded by

Fatimah Binti Abd Rahman
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Fracture and Toughness

Stress-strain Behavior of Polymers


Do not like ceramics and metals, polymer materials exhibit Various stress-strain behaviors, ranging from very brittle to highly deformable
Modulus of elasticity ~7MPa to 4GPa. Plastic elongation can be >100%

very sensitive characteristics to strain rate, temperature, chemical environment

Brittle

Plastic Highly elastic

The area under the stress-strain curve is a measure of the toughness and has units of energy per unit volume. The tensile toughness, therefore, is an indication of the energy that a material can absorb before breaking.

Brittle Polymer
-Fracture in a brittle manner, eg Polystyrene or other glassy thermoplastics - In PS, the fracture and crack propagation occurs in the form of craze CRAZE , under electron microscope reveals: load-bearing fibrils about 20 nm in diameter span the gap between the surface of the polymer. Craze

Fibril Molecular entanglements are essential, without them, there would be little to stabilize the loaded fibrils If the polymer chains are too short to form effective entanglements, the material is fragile

In thermoset, such as epoxy resin, the cross-linked resins show little yielding under any conditions because the molecular network is unable to deform sufficiently

Plastics

- ductile or brittle

Whether a polymer is ductile or brittle in any given circumstance depend its resistance to yield, and to crazing and subsequent crack propagation

Increase Fracture resistance:


rubber modification add between 5 to 20% to form a small particles, between 0.1 to 5m - rubber particles have low moduli, and therefore act as stress concentrators.

Problem with crazing -certain level of craze formation renders the component unserviceable - visibility is reduce in PMMA helicopter cabins - porosity can be a problem in ABS pipe Crazing is precursor to fracture in a large number of polymers

Fracture Mechanics
Failure is inhibited by energy-absorbing processes around the crack tip. - unable to relieve the stress concentration or other mechanisms of crack blunting. A crack will spread only if the total energy of the system is lowered thereby

NEED to examine the change in the total internal energy of the system as the crack begins to spread

Fracture Mechanics
Brittle Solids fracture because the applied stress is amplified by minute cracks. This crack occur naturally as a result of fabrication, solidification, fatigue damage etc. This cracks are termed Griffith cracks. Consider a thin sheet of thickness B and infinite width containing a sharp crack of length 2a transverse to a tensile stress applied by Fixed grips. The total energy of the system: 1. The elastic strain 2. The work of crack formation
B

2a

Fracture Mechanics Elastic strain energy The elastic strain energy per unit volume is
E is Youngs modulus. o volume V of specimen, the total strain energy is

2 + 2E

V 2 + 2E

- the net effect of the insertion of a crack is a lowering of the total strain energy of the sheet by

2a 2 B E

Fracture Mechanics
Work of Crack Formation
The work done per unit area of crack surface is Gc Assume that no heat is dissipated The total work of crack formation:

crack area x Gc = 2aBGc


The change in energy by the crack is

2a 2 B + 2aBGc E U= -

(1)

Note: the crack spreads AND the negative sign implies that the elastic strain energy decrease.

Fracture Mechanics
The dependence of U on a is shown in graph.
(2BGc)a U U am - (2B/E) a2 a is a central crack At small a the term linear in a dominates: it is positive and represents a

the increase in the work of crack formation as the crack spreads At large a the term in a2 dominates: it is negative and represents the diminution in total strain energy as the crack spreads.

Fracture Mechanics
The crack is on the point of growth under stress , the work of crack propagation balances the decrease in elastic strain energy; d 2a 2 B d = ( 2aBGC ) (2) da E da Therefore: (3) 2a = EG c
This point is represent by the maximum in the U vs a plot which is stable at am

am =

EGc

(4)

Fracture Mechanics
For a above am dU/da is negative, as a increases U decreases- the total energy of the system decreases and the crack will spread catastrophically. a below am dU/da is positive, crack will not spread because U increases with crack size. If the stress is increased from zero, the fracture stress F is F = (EGc / a)1/2 (plane-stress) (5) Is known as Griffith equation.

Fracture Mechanics
Gc is known as the fracture energy. A more useful parameter is the plane-stress intensity factor Kc, which is defined as (for a wide sheet) Kc = F (a)1/2 (plane-stress) (6)

From eq. 5 and 6 : Kc = (EGc)1/2


(7)

The use of Kc to determine whether or not a given thin sheet will fracture under a stress implies that the size of the largest crack in the sheet is known to designer. The the stress intensity factor K = F The crack will not spread for K < Kc

(a)1/2

Fracture Mechanics
Kc = (EGc)1/2 (plane-stress)

Kc = F (a)1/2 (plane-stress)

The the stress intensity factor K = F (a)1/2

The crack will not spread for K < Kc

Example 1 A sharp, central crack of length 60 mm in a wide, thin sheet of a glassy plastic commences to propagate at F = 3.26 MPa. (a) Calculate Kc
;

(b) Calculate Gc given that E=3GPa; (c) Will a crack of length 5 mm in a similar sheet fracture under = 20 MPa ? Answer (a) Kc = F (a)1/2 = 3.26 ( x x 60 x 10-3)1/2 = 1.00 MPa m1/2
K c2 Gc = E

(b)

= (106)2/3 X 109 = 333J/m2

(c) K = (a)1/2

Thank you

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