Fracture Mechanics in Composites

A Brief Overview
Student 12/9/2012
Advisor Undergraduate Research

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the fracture mechanics its basic behavior and how it impacts the world . Griffiths criterion and Irwin's will be briefly looked at. This paper will mainly focus on the linear aspect of fracturing. Fatigue of structures and materials will be explored in the capacity that it effects the behavior of the structure through loading and unloading, cyclic loading. Also a brief history of the origins of fracture mechanics will also be seen. Stresses and strains on the structure will also be briefly explored. Finally the basic of composite materials and their behavior. This paper will hit the highlights of what I researched over the semester, so there will be no mathematical theory included. History of Fracture Mechanics
The establishment of the fracture mechanics field is closely related to some will known disasters throughout history. The National Bureau of Standards and Battelle Memorial Institute estimated the costs for failure due to fracture to be $119 billion per year in 1982 dollars. The most significant thing is the loss of human lives due to the failure of equipment. Failures come in many different types such as material defects, improper design, and failure to keep up maintenance. One of the main catalyst to the creation of the fracture mechanics field was the Versailles rail accident in 1842, this was the first major rail accident that spurred investigations into the behavior of metals and there

failure. The Versailles rail accident is depicted below. Another famous catalyst was the Montrose suspension bridge that failed in March 1830. While designs back then were not excellent most of the accidents and lose of life were occurring due to fracturing of wheels, axels, and support beams. Another example would be liberty ships used during World War II, roughly twenty eight hundred ships were created to help transport equipment and material. Man of the ships sustained major structure failure and a good portion simply split in half.

Fracture Mechanics
Failure of structures is often caused by cracks or voids in the material that expand and cause failure. These failures or cracks are a direct result of either manufacturing defects or the loading and unloading of the structures. The definition of fracture is "the act of breaking or the state of being broken". Fracture mechanics is the field of study that examines the propagation of cracks through a material. The field is important in that it helps improve the mechanical performance of materials and structures to avoid the loss of life.

Fracture mechanics uses the analytical method of solid mechanics, behavior of solid matter under external actions, to determine what drives crack formations and its characteristics. The two mechanics are elastically, when stress is applied and removed the materials returns to the initial state, and plastically, the material will typically act elastically when the yield value is not reached however when that is passed the material will not return to its original form and the material is permanently deformed. Fracture mechanics can be split into two main divisions, the linear elastic fracture mechanics and the other is elasto-plastic fracture mechanics. Linear elastic fracture mechanics are usually used for brittle materials like high performance steel. For ductile materials the plastic behavior will always lead fracture. For small perturbations in the structure the linear elastic fracture mechanics is a good approximate. Geometry is also a large part of the field. The Griffiths criterion was developed by A.A. Griffith he developed the theory to help explain the failure of brittle materials. He was motivated by the fact that the stress required to break glass was around 100 MPa but the theoretical stress needed to break the bonds between the atoms, atomic bonds, was around 10,000 MPa. Griffith wanted to explore why this occurred. He proposed that the forming of the cracks was a flaw of the material at a microscopic level. His theory's used elastic energy to try and determine how fractures worked he also found it was dependent on the geometry of the object. However Griffiths work was ignored until G.R. Irwin came and expanded on it to include ductile materials and added the plasticity part to it. This was the start of the fields basic development.

Types of Fractures
Fractures are the process of breaking a material or structure into pieces under the influence of stresses. There are two different types of fractures. There is brittle fracture where no plastic deformation is seen before the structure fractures and failure is achieved. The other type of fracture is ductile fracturing, there is extensive plastic deformation that is seen before the structure fractures and

failure occurs. For both of these fracture types there are crack separation modes that describes how the crack will propagate through the structure, there are three modes: Opening Mode, Sliding Mode, and Tearing Mode. There are a multitude of tests to see how materials will react and how they break, such as the impact test or a 3/4 point bending test and a tensile test. A good measure of that is the materials toughness, K. fracture toughness is the property used to describe the materials ability to resist fracture, it is one of the most important properties of any material and structure. General factors, affecting the toughness of a material are: temperature, strain rate, relationship between the strength and ductility of the material and presence of stresses and strains applied to the material.

A.) Brittle Fracture

Brittle fracture is characterized by very low plastic deformation and low energy absorption prior to breaking. A crack, formed as a result of the brittle fracture, propagates fast and without increase of the stress applied to the material. The brittle crack is perpendicular to the stress direction. There are two different types mechanisms for brittle fractures. One is the transcrystalline (transgranular), cleavage) the cracks pass along crystallographic planes through the grains. The other type is intercrystalline (intergranular) which occurs through the grain boundaries, through segregated impurities, second phase inclusions and other defects. The brittle fractures usually possess bright granular appearance.

B.) Ductile Fracture

Ductile materials undergo observable plastic deformation and absorb significant energy before fracture. A crack, formed as a result of the ductile fracture, propagates slowly and when the stress is increased. A common term for this is called necking. Plastic deformation of a the material causes formation and coalescence of voids on the phase and inclusions boundaries. The steps to the failure are:

Initial formation of the void, coalescence begins, the crack begins to propagate, and then full failure is achieved. These voids are responsible for the specific appearance of the ductile fracture surface, consisting of numerous spherical micro-cavities ,initiating formation of the crack. Materials in the form of a dog bone or cylinder often fractured by the ductile mechanism are characterized by the cap and cone appearance of the fracture as seen below. Single-phase alloys and pure metals are more ductile, than metals, containing second phases or inclusions. Ductile response in engineering are preferred as it is easily seen when and where components may fail.

C.) Crack Modes

Mode I is a normal-opening mode while modes II and III are shear sliding modes. Mode I is a caused by a tensile stress that occurs normal to the plane of the crack. The displacement of the cracks surface are perpendicular to the plane of the crack. Mode II is a shear stress acting parallel to the plane of the crack and perpendicular to the crack front. Mode II is also called "sliding mode: is the displacement of the crack surfaces is in the plane of the crack and perpendicular to the leading edge of the crack. Mode III is a shear stress acting parallel to the plane of the crack and parallel to the crack front. Mode III is also known as "tearing mode" is caused by out of plane shear. These three cases describe the most important types of fractures. However the most important of those is mode I. How a crack propagates through the material shows important information into the mode of fracture. In ductile fractures, the crack moves slowly and a large amount of plastic deformation occurs. The crack usually will not expand more unless there is an increase in the stress that is applied to the material. Dealing with brittle fracture, cracks spread very rapidly with little or no plastic deformation. The cracks that propagate in a brittle material will continue to grow and increase in magnitude once they are initiated. Another important aspect of crack propagation is how the crack travel through the

material. A crack that passes through the grains within the material is transgranular fracture. A crack that propagates along the grain boundaries is an intergranular fracture.

Modes 1-3

Left Ductile, right brittle

Fatigue
Fatigue is the dynamic and localized structural damage that occurs when materials and structures are subjected to cyclic loading tests. These test typically do not pass the ultimate tensile stress limit unless full failure is desired. Fatigue happens when a material is subjected to multiple cyclic test, when these values exceed the materials strength cracks and nucleation's/voids will start to occur

where the stress is concentrated. Eventually the cracks will reach a critical point where the material will achieve failure and fracture. The geometry of the materials will greatly affect the type of fatigue and the life span of the material, for instance anything with an edge will have greater concentrations on those edges where as round or smooth bodies will not. Fatigue life is defined as the number of stress cycles a materials can sustain before the material fails and fractures, there are methods to estimate this but it is impossible to predict where the cracks will occur. There are multiple aspects of fatigue that have been developed to help understand how it works. Fatigue limit, endurance limit, and fatigue strength are all expressions used to describe a property of materials: the range of cyclic stress that can be applied to the material without causing fatigue failure. Fatigue is a process that is unpredictable even under heavily controlled environments. There are two main types of fatigue testing, the high cycle fatigue test and the low cycle fatigue test. High cycle fatigue strength test can have the cyclic unload for about 103 to 108 cycles. Low cycle fatigue
usually has less than 10 cycles and it is associated with widespread plasticity in metals. An S-N curve is usually
3

used to show the fatigue life of a materials, one is shown below. Fatigue life is influenced by a multitude of different factors. Some common ones are temperature, the finish of the materials surface, the crystalline structure of the material, the presence of imperfect structuring and voids, and the presence of oxidizing or inert chemicals, stresses, strains, body forces ,etc. The materials geometry and material type also play large roles in how the materials fatigue life is like. Components are often designed so that the fatigue life is maximized by testing above the typical loading of the component would be subjected to, they also instruct people to inspect and replace components whenever fatigue is seen. The development of fatigue is very similar to the fracture: crack nucleation, crack growth, further crack growth, and ultimate ductile failure or fracture.

Composite Materials
In the field of materials there are three main categories of materials: Ceramics, polymers and metals. Here we will briefly look at composite materials which is an engineered materials made of two or more constituent materials each with significantly different characteristics to create a composite that has both their individual strengths and less of the weaknesses. Composites are made up of multiple materials each is referred to as constituent materials. There are two categories of constituent materials, one it the matrix and the other is the reinforcement. At least one portion of each type is required. The matrix material surrounds and supports the reinforcement materials by maintaining their relative positions. The reinforcements impart their special mechanical and physical properties to enhance the matrix properties. There are many different polymers available depending upon the starting raw

ingredients. The most common are known as polyester, vinyl ester, epoxy, polypropylene, PEEK, and others. The reinforcement materials are often fibers but also commonly ground minerals. The various methods described below have been developed to reduce the resin content of the final product, or the fiber content is increased. There are different types of fibers used, short fibers of continuous fibers; each has its own strength's. The mechanics of composite materials are typically anisotropic, they are dependent on how the force is applied. Since composites are multiple materials when under stress they can delaminate where the layers either separate or the fibers fray. When composites fail they can fail on both the macro and micro scale and they are tested for fatigue and failure before and after they are molded. Composites have been around for centuries, starting with early civilizations using mud and straw to create stronger buildings. Plastics started to appear in the nineteen-hundreds to find stronger materials to meet the needs for industry, a few years later fiberglass start to be created which spurred the industry. However the largest driving force in the composites field was the occurrence of World War II. World War II created the need to have faster, stronger, light materials specifically for military aircraft. After that it was the space age that had a huge push for the industry with the need for war materials demising. Composites will always be around for their excellent characteristics. There are many benefits to composite materials, which has lead to its mass adaption to every industry in the world. Because of these benefits many other advances have been made. Composites tend to be light weight in comparison to their counterpart like concrete and metals. With composites being light it allows for less required energy expenditure. They are also extremely strong per unit mass, this help in that they become more resistant to other forces they may be subjected to. Composites also have very elastic behavior, and this helps in the sense that they will snap back to their original state, unlike metals which after enough stress will stay permanently deformed. Each different material type has its benefits, one needs to look and see what the requirements are and choose what material best suits the needs.