Fracture Mechanics and NanoTechnology for Defence

Introduction
All engineering components and structures contain geometrical discontinuities –
threaded connections, windows in aircraft fuselages, keyways in shaft, teeth of gear wheels,
etc. The size and shape of these features are important since they determine the strength of
the artifact. Conventionally, the strength of components or structures containing defects is
assessed by evaluating the stress concentration caused by the discontinuity features.
However, such a conventional approach would give erroneous answers if the geometrical
discontinuity features have very sharp radii. To illustrate this point, consider the following
four cases:

The thickness of each plate is the same. The forces required to break the four samples can be
arranged in the following order:
F4 < F3 < F1 < F2
Clearly the sizes of the defects at F3 and F4 are crucial to the strength of the structure.
From investigating fallen structures, engineers found that most failure began with
cracks. These cracks may be caused by material defects (dislocation, impurities...),
discontinuities in assembly and/or design (sharp corners, grooves, nicks, voids...), harsh
environments (thermal stress, corrosion...) and damages in service (impact, fatigue,
unexpected loads...). Most microscopic cracks are arrested inside the material but it takes one
run-away crack to destroy the whole structure
Fracture Mechanics and NanoTechnology for Defence

Fracture Mechanics
To analyze the relationship among stresses, cracks, and fracture toughness, Fracture
Mechanics was introduced. The first milestone was set by Griffith in his famous 1920 paper
that quantitatively relates the flaw size to the fracture stresses. However, Griffith's approach
is too primitive for engineering applications and is only good for brittle materials.
Fracture mechanics is a set of theories describing the behavior of solids or structures
with geometrical discontinuity at the scale of the structure. The discontinuity features may be
in the form of line discontinuities in two-dimensional media (such as plates, and shells) and
surface discontinuities in three-dimensional media. Fracture mechanics has now evolved into
a mature discipline of science and engineering and has dramatically changed out
understanding of the behavior of engineering materials. One of the important impacts of
fracture mechanics is the establishment of a new design philosophy: damage tolerance design
methodology, which has now become the industry standard in aircraft design.
Fracture mechanics is a method for predicting failure of a structure containing a
crack. It uses methods of analytical Solid mechanics to calculate the driving force on a crack
and those of experimental Solid mechanics to characterize the material's resistance to
fracture. It applies the physics of stress and strain, in particular the theories of elasticity and
plasticity, to the microscopic crystallographic defects found in real materials in order to
predict the macroscopic mechanical failure of bodies. Fractography is widely used with
Fracture Mechanics to understand the causes of failures and also verify the theoretical failure
predictions with real life failures. Fractography is the study of fracture surfaces of materials
to determine the cause of failure. The method is used to study fracture surfaces in any
material, such as metals, ceramics, glasses and polymers.
Fracture mechanics can be divided into linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) and
elasto-plastic fracture mechanics (EPFM). LEFM gives excellent results for brittle-elastic
materials like high-strength steel, glass, ice, concrete, and so on. However, for ductile
materials like low-carbon steel, stainless steel, certain aluminium alloys and polymers,
plasticity will always precede fracture. Nonetheless, whether load is low enough, linear
fracture mechanics continues to provide a good approximation to the physical reality.
Fracture Mechanics and NanoTechnology for Defence

Engineering applications of fracture mechanics

The following information is needed for a fracture mechanics prediction of failure:
• Applied load
• Residual stress
• Size and shape of the part
• Size, shape, location, and orientation of the crack
Usually not all of this information is available and conservative assumptions have to be
made. Occasionally post-mortem fracture-mechanics analyses are carried out. In the absence
of an extreme overload, the causes are either insufficient toughness (K Ic) or an excessively
large crack that was not detected during routine inspection.
Arising from the manufacturing process, interior and surface flaws are found in all metal
structures. Not all such flaws are unstable under service conditions. Fracture mechanics is the
analysis of flaws to discover those that are safe (that is, do not grow) and those that are liable
to propagate as cracks and so cause failure of the flawed structure. Fracture mechanics as a
subject for critical study has barely been around for a century and thus is relatively new.

Griffith's crack theory: strain energy release rate

For the simple case of a thin rectangular plate with a crack perpendicular to the load
Griffith’s theory becomes:

(1.1)
where G is the strain energy release rate, σ is the applied stress, a is half the crack length, and
E is the Young’s modulus. The strain energy release rate can otherwise be understood as: the
rate at which energy is absorbed by growth of the crack.However, we also have that:

(1.2)
If G ≥ Gc, this is the criterion for which the crack will begin to propagate.

Irwin's modified Griffith crack theory: fracture toughness

Eventually a modification of Griffith’s solids theory emerged from this work; a term
called stress intensity replaced strain energy release rate and a term called fracture toughness
replaced surface weakness energy. Both of these terms are simply related to the energy terms
that Griffith used:

(2.1)
Fracture Mechanics and NanoTechnology for Defence

and

(for plane stress) (2.2)

(for plane strain) (2.3)

where KI is the stress intensity, Kc the fracture toughness, and ν is Poisson’s ratio. It is
important to recognise the fact that fracture parameter Kc has different values when measured
under plane stress and plane strain
Fracture occurs when KI ≥ Kc. For the special case of plane strain deformation, Kc becomes
KIc and is considered a material property. The subscript I arises because of the different ways
of loading a material to enable a butt crack to propagate. It refers to loading via Mode I - the
most common form of loading:

The three fracture modes.

There are three ways of applying a force to enable a crack to propagate:
• Mode I crack - Opening mode (a tensile stress normal to the plane of the crack)
• Mode II crack - Sliding mode (a shear stress acting parallel to the plane of the crack
and perpendicular to the crack front)
• Mode III crack - Tearing mode (a shear stress acting parallel to the plane of the crack
and parallel to the crack front)
We must note that the expression for KI in Eq (2.1) will be different for geometries other than
the center cracked plate, as discussed in the article on stress intensity. Consequently, it is
necessary to introduce a dimensionless correction factor, Y, in order to characterise the
geometry. We thus have:

(2.4)
where Y is a function of the crack length and width of sheet given by:
Fracture Mechanics and NanoTechnology for Defence

(2.5)
for a sheet of finite width W containing a through-thickness crack of length 2a, or

(2.6)
for a sheet of finite width W containing a through-thickness edge crack of length a

Nanotechnology for Defence

Research into nanotechnology devices for aeronautics applications should investigate
bonding of dissimilar materials, material properties, and scaling. Industry would greatly
benefit from any technology that improved the ability to bond dissimilar materials.
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) research is investigating the ability to create strong
bonds between (1) silicon and silicon and (2) silicon and other materials, and the committee
is hopeful that nanotechnology research might someday lead to material bonding
methodologies for critical aviation applications. Nanotechnology may lead to the
development of new structural materials with high strength-to-weight ratios and fracture
toughness, durable coatings, greater resistance to corrosion, self-healing, and multifunctional
characteristics. For example, structural materials might have embedded sensors and actuators;
custom-designed properties, such as electrical conductivity, mechanical strength, magnetic
behavior, and optical properties; or improved damping properties. Multimode damping could
lead to the elimination of swash plates in helicopter rotors, which would be a major design
breakthrough, and greatly reduced fatigue failure in turbofan blade applications. Self-healing
materials (e.g., materials embedded with small particles of liquid that would be released and
fill in cracks to prevent them from propagating) may allow flying aircraft closer to their
fatigue limits, but generally the benefits of self-healing are likely to be greatly exceeded by
the benefits of increased strength and reduced weight. The properties that nanomaterials
demonstrate at nanoscales do not necessarily predict the properties of macroscale materials
that incorporate nanomaterials. For example, nano-microtubes have heat-transfer rates
comparable to that of diamonds, but more research is needed to assess the ability of
nanotubes to increase the heat transfer capabilities of structural materials. Also, segments of
some nanotechnology fibers are on the order of 30 times stronger than glass fibers.
Rolled homogeneous armour, or RHA, is a theoretical basic type of steel plate, used
as a baseline to compare the effectiveness of military vehicle armour. This can be used to
protect the vehicles from spalls or blasts. Through the end of World War II, the type of
Fracture Mechanics and NanoTechnology for Defence

armour for almost all tanks and other armoured vehicles was sheets of steel. Increasing the
protection on a vehicle meant adding thicker sheets of steel, increasing the vehicle's weight
and reducing its mobility. Since then, other forms of armour, incorporating empty spaces and
materials such as ceramics or depleted uranium in addition to steel, have been developed.
Made ineffective by modern weapons using high-impact or high-temperature cutting jets,
RHA itself is obsolete due to advances in vehicle armor. The more recent term RHAe (Rolled
Homogeneous Armour equivalency) is used when giving a rough estimate of either the
penetrative capability of a projectile or the protective capability of a type of armour which
may or may not be steel.

There are many recent advances in making RHA steel stronger and lighter in weight.
There came many substitutes and still much of research is going on in this field. Carbon
nanotubes (CNTs) are allotropes of carbon. A single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) is a
one-atom thick sheet of graphite (called graphene) rolled up into a seamless cylinder with
diameter on the order of a nanometer. This results in a nanostructure where the length-to-
diameter ratio exceeds 1,000,000. Such cylindrical carbon molecules have novel properties
that make them potentially useful in many applications in nanotechnology, electronics, optics
and other fields of materials science. They exhibit extraordinary strength and unique
electrical properties, and are efficient conductors of heat. Inorganic nanotubes have also been
synthesized. Nanocomposites are materials that are created by introducing nanoparticulates
(often referred to as filler) into a macroscopic sample material (often referred to as the
matrix). This is part of the growing field of nanotechnology. After adding nanoparticulates to
the matrix material, the resulting nanocomposite may exhibit drastically enhanced properties.
For example, adding carbon nanotubes tends to drastically add to the electrical and thermal
conductivity. Other kinds of nanoparticulates may result in enhanced optical properties,
dielectric properties or mechanical properties such as stiffness and strength. In general, the
nanosubstance is dispersed into the matrix during processing. The percentage by weight
(called mass fraction) of the nanoparticulates introduced is able to remain very low (on the
order of 0.5% to 5%) due to the incredibly high surface area to volume ratio of
nanoparticulates. Much research is going into developing more efficient combinations of
matrix and filler materials and into better controlling the production process.
Fracture Mechanics and NanoTechnology for Defence

Conclusion
The potential posed by nanoscience and technology is enormous, but how, when, and
the extent to which this potential will be realized are impossible to predict, and the specifics
of predictions become more uncertain the farther they are extended into the future (NRC,
002d). It is especially difficult to determine how the application of nanotechnology may
improve top-level characteristics such as overall aircraft performance or the safety of the air
transportation system. To date, nanotechnology has been very successful in some devices, but
not in devices large enough and robust enough to be directly applicable to commercial
aviation. Major advances in the application of nanotechnology are likely to depend upon the
ability to integrate nanotechnology fibers and features in intelligent ways to create
macroscale materials with specific desired properties. Fracture mechanics as a subject for
critical study has barely been around for a century and thus is relatively new. Ultimately, the
success of Fracture mechanics and nanotechnology rests upon the development of successful
commercial products.

References
 Fracture Mechanics, fundamentals and applications, by Anderson T.L, CRC Press
 Ganesh Thiagarajan, Jimmy K. Hsia and Yonggang Huang (2003).“Finite Element
Implementation of Virtual Internal Bond Model for Crack Behavior Simulation.”
Engineering Fracture Mechanics, In Press..
 www.wikipedia.org

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SANTOSH BHARADWAJ REDDY
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