Int J Fract (2013) 181:112

DOI 10.1007/s10704-013-9808-5
ORIGINAL PAPER
Three dimensional nite element investigations
into the effects of thickness and notch radius
on the fracture toughness of polycarbonate
Brunda Kattekola Abhishek Ranjan
Sumit Basu
Received: 9 August 2012 / Accepted: 10 January 2013 / Published online: 26 February 2013
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract Fracture toughness of polycarbonate (PC),
a commercially important glassy amorphous polymer,
is known to be sensitively dependent on a number of
factors including molecular weight, ageing time, load-
ing rate and specimen geometry. In this work, we ana-
lyze the effect of notch radius and specimen thickness
on the near tip elds and the consequence of these on
the mode I fracture initiation. To this end, we have
performed extensive three dimensional Finite Element
simulations within the framework of large deformation
elasto-plasticity based on a realistic constitutive model
that has beencarefullycalibratedfor PC. Usinga simple
set of criteria for fracture initiation by void nucleation
or ductile tearing, we are able to reproduce experimen-
tally observed brittle to ductile transitions that occur in
PC with decrease in thickness and increase in notch
radius.
Keywords Ductile to Brittle transition Thickness
Notch tip radius Polycarbonate
1 Introduction
Glassyamorphous polymers like polymethyl methacry-
late (PMMA), polystyrene (PS) and polycarbonate
(PC) etc. form a large class of important structural
B. Kattekola A. Ranjan S. Basu (B)
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute
of Technology, Kanpur 208016, Uttar Pradesh, India
e-mail:sbasu@iitk.ac.in
materials. Exhaustive investigations by Kramer and
co-workers (Kramer 1983; Kramer and Berger 1990)
on thin polymer lms have established that crazing
and shear yielding are the two important localization
micromechanisms in these materials and often, failure
is a result of either or a competition between the two
(Estevez et al. 2000). The polymer is considered brit-
tle when crazing is the dominant failure mechanism
and ductile when shear yielding dominates. However,
whether a polymer behaves in a brittle or ductile man-
ner depends on a host of factors. For example, PC, one
of the most widely used materials of this type, shows
brittle to ductile transitions with temperature (Ravetti
et al. 1975), molecular weight (Pitman and Ward 1979),
ageing time (Ho and Vu-Khanh 2004) and rate of load-
ing (Rittel and Maigre 1996). Moreover, the fracture
toughness of PC is signicantly lower in plane strain
compared to plane stress (Parvin and Williams 1975;
Fraser and Ward 1977), though the specic mecha-
nism of failure depends sensitively on the notch radius
(Nisitani and Hyakutake 1985).
It is clear from the above discussion that the frac-
ture mechanism and hence fracture toughness K
I c
of
PCdepends ona large number of factors. Consequently,
the numerical prediction of K
I c
becomes difcult and
typical constitutive models of polymers, even when
micromechanically motivated, (Boyce et al. 1988; Wu
and Van der Giessen 1993; Anand and Ames 2006)
involve a large number of tting parameters. Local-
ization of the deformation into shear bands occurs
1 3
2 B. Kattekola et al.
naturally in simulations with these constitutive mod-
els (Lai and Van der Giessen 1997; Basu and Van der
Giessen 2002) but incorporation of crazing requires
the use of yet another set of phenomenological laws
(Estevez et al. 2000; Basu and Van der Giessen 2002).
Fidelity of these largely phenomenological predictions
require careful calibration of the many model parame-
ters and may vary sensitively with any of the factors
listed in the previous paragraph.
Typical uniaxial stress strain response of PCconsists
of a yield drop or intrinsic softening right after reach-
ingyield, analmost perfectlyplastic response thereafter
followed by a steep hardening with strain till a maxi-
mum stretch is attained (see Fig. 1). Consequently, the
stress eld ahead of a notch in PC (for that matter in
any material with a similar uniaxial response) is sig-
nicantly different from those in power law harden-
ing metals. Finite Element (FE) simulations using rate
sensitive nite deformation constitutive models have
shown this clearly in two dimensional settings. Lai and
Van der Giessen (1997) used a small scale yielding
simulation to investigate the effect of variations in the
uniaxial response on the nature of the crack tip plastic
zone. For materials with no hardening, the plastic zones
are qualitatively similar to that in metals. For strongly
softening materials, the plastic zone consists of multi-
ple families of shear bands that keep multiplying with
load. On the other hand, with both softening and hard-
ening (as in the case of PC), a competition between
the two counteracting factors ensues and a single set
of shear bands initiated at the notch tip grow almost
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6
25
50
75
Strain
S
t
r
e
s
s
(
M
P
a
)
Fig. 1 Typical uniaxial true stress versus true strain response
of PC
self similarly with load. The nature of the plastic zone
ahead of the tip of a notch affects the initiation of crazes
as shown by Estevez et al. (2000).
Further, Basu and Van der Giessen (2002)) looked at
the rate and temperature effects on the fracture initia-
tion toughness of a PC-like polymer using a craze initi-
ation criterion due to Sternstein and Ongochin (1969).
Gearing and Anand (2004) attempted to capture the
transition from brittle fracture in high triaxiality condi-
tions prevalent ahead of sharp notches to ductile modes
in low triaxiality situations ahead of blunt ones using a
failure mechanism that involved competition between
the elastic volumetric strain and an effective plastic
stretch. It should be emphasized that in these simula-
tions, crack propagation was not modelled and except
inGearingandAnand(2004), quantitative comparisons
with experiments were not made.
While two dimensional simulations of PC provide
important insights into the interplay of various phys-
ical parameters and imposed conditions on initiation
of fracture, they necessarily pertain to innitely thick
specimens. Experiments show that the effect of thick-
ness in fracture testing of PC is rather strong. In fact,
thickness and notch radius seem to sensitively gov-
ern the nature of failure (see, Parvin and Williams
1975; Fraser and Ward 1977; Nisitani and Hyakutake
1985)a fact that two dimensional simulations are not
equipped to capture. Experiments typically show that
thick samples of PC fail by crazing which starts at the
center of the specimen. Thin specimens undergo ductile
tear, through a lip-like thin zone that propagates ahead
of the tip. Onthe other hand, sharpnotches tendtocause
brittle and blunt notches ductile failure. As shown by
Nisitani and Hyakutake (1985), the shape of the plastic
zone ahead of the tip also changes considerably with
notch radius.
The purpose of the present paper is to see if existing
constitutive models of PC are capable of qualitatively
and quantitatively predicting the effects of thickness
and notch radius on the fracture toughness of PC. To
this end we performnite deformation based fully three
dimensional FE simulations using a constitutive model
due to Wu and Van der Giessen (1993) which has been
calibrated against careful uniaxial tensile tests reported
elsewhere (Kattekola et al. 2012). All the simulations
reported herein are performed on single edge notched
plate (SEN) specimens with varying thickness 2B and
notch radius , as shown in Fig. 2.
1 3 1 3
Three dimensional nite element investigations 3
Fig. 2 Single edge notch plate specimen
In the following, tensors are denoted by bold capitals
while bold lower case denotes vectors. Scalar product
of two tensors are denoted as A : B while the dyadic
product is denoted by A B and ( )

denotes the devi-

atoric part of a tensor.
2 Modelling details
2.1 Constitutive model
When crazing does not take place or is suppressed, as
in compression or shear tests, amorphous polymers like
PCcan undergo quite large strains (up to about 100%).
Their response shows softening upon yielding followed
by progressive hardening as the deformation continues.
In a numerical investigation of inelastic deformation
and localization in PC, Lu and Ravi-Chandar (1999)
pointed out that macroscopic softening of the specimen
does not necessarily imply that softening is an intrinsic
property of the material. However, in an analysis of
the stress and strain elds around the tip of a blunted
crack under mode I, Lai and Van der Giessen (1997)
showed that intrinsic softening is necessary to capture
the localized strain elds observed experimentally as
in Ishikawa et al. (1977). Also, it is important to note
that softening is seen in uniaxial compression tests.
We start out with the constitutive description of
amorphous polymers at large plastic strains for tem-
peratures below the glass transition T
g
. The constitu-
tive model is based on the formulation of Boyce et al.
(1988) but we use a modied version introduced by
Wu and Van der Giessen (1993). Details of the gov-
erning equations and the computational aspects can be
found in Wu and Van der Giessen (1996). The reader is
also referred to the review by Van der Giessen (1997)
together with a presentation of the thermomechanical
framework in Basu and Van der Giessen (2002).
The constitutive model makes use of the decomposi-
tion of the rate of deformation Dinto an elastic (D
e
) and
a plastic part (D
p
) as D = D
e
+D
p
. Prior to yielding, no
plasticity takes place and D
p
= 0. In this regime, most
amorphous polymers exhibit visco-elastic effects but
these are neglected here since we are primarily inter-
ested in the effect of the bulk plasticity. Assuming the
elastic strains to remain small, the constitutive model
takes the form,

= L
e
:D
e
, (1)
where

is the Jaumann rate of the Cauchy stress given
in terms of the spin tensor W as

= W +W, (2)
and L
e
the usual fourth-order isotropic elastic modulus
tensor given by
L
e
= I
2
I
2
+I
4
. (3)
Here, and are Lames constants while I
2
and I
4
are
the symmetric second order and fourth order identity
tensors. Assuming that the yield response is isotropic,
the isochoric visco-plastic strain rate
D
p
=

p

, with =
_
1
2

, (4)
is specied in terms of the equivalent shear strain rate

p
=
_
D
p
: D
p
, the driving stress = b and the
related equivalent shear stress . The back stress tensor
b describes the progressive hardening of the material
as the strain increases and will be dened later. The
equivalent shear strain rate
p
is taken from Argons
(1973) expression
1 3
4 B. Kattekola et al.

p
=
0
exp
_

As
0
T
_
1
_

s
0
_
5/6
__
for T < T
g
,
(5)
where
0
and A are material parameters and T the
absolute temperature [note that plastic ow is inher-
ently temperature dependent through (5)]. In Eq. (5) the
shear strength s
0
is related to elastic molecular proper-
ties in Argons original formulation but is considered
here as a separate material parameter. Further in order
to account for the effect of strain softening and for the
pressure dependence of the plastic strain rate, s
0
in (5)
is replaced by s +p, where is a pressure sensitivity
coefcient and p =
1
3
tr . The shear strength s is
taken to evolve from the initial value s
0
with the plastic
strain rate through
s = h(1 s/s
ss
)
p
, (6)
so as to incorporate strain softening in a simple way.
Here, h controls the rate of softening while s
ss
repre-
sents the nal, steady state value of s.
Completion of the constitutive model requires the
description of the progressive hardening of amorphous
polymers upon yielding due to deformation-induced
stretch of the molecular chains. This effect is incorpo-
ratedthroughthe backstress b inthe drivingshear stress
in Eq. (4). Its description is based on the analogy
with the stretching of the cross-linked network in rub-
ber elasticity, but with the cross-links in rubber being
replaced with the physical entanglements in an amor-
phous glassy polymer (Boyce et al. 1988). The defor-
mation of the resulting network is assumed to derive
from the accumulated plastic stretch (Wu and Van der
Giessen 1993) so that the principal back stress compo-
nents b

are functions of the principal plastic stretches

as
b =

(e
p

e
p

) , b

= b

), (7)
in which e
p

are the principal directions of the plastic

stretch. In a description of the fully three-dimensional
orientation distribution of non-Gaussian molecular
chains in a network, Wu and Van der Giessen (1993)
showed that b can be estimated accurately with the fol-
lowing combination of the classical three-chain model
and the eight-chain description (Arruda and Boyce
1993):
b

= (1 )b
3ch

+b
8ch

, (8)
where the fraction = 0.85

N is basedonthe max-
imum plastic stretch

= max(
1
,
2
,
3
) and on N,
the number of segments between entanglements. The
use of Langevin statistics for calculating b

implies a
limit stretch of

N. The expressions for the principal

components of b
3ch

and b
8ch

contain a second mate-

rial parameter: the initial shear modulus C
R
= nk
B
T,
in which n is the volume density of entanglements (k
B
is the Boltzmann constant).
For the 3-chain network model the principal back
stretches in terms of the accumulated plastic stretches
(

) are given by the expression (Boyce et al. 1988):

b
3ch

=
1
3
C
R

L
1
_

N
_
. (9)
For the 8-chain network model the principal back
stretches in terms of the accumulated plastic stretches
(

) are given by the expression (Arruda and Boyce

1993):
b
8ch

=
1
3
C
R

N

2

c
L
1
_

c

N
_
, (10)
with

2
c
=
1
3
3

=1

. (11)
The model parameters have been carefully tted
using results from standard uniaxial tension experi-
ments on commercially available PC. These results
are discussed elsewhere (Kattekola et al. 2012) but,
the parameters used in the simulations are summa-
rized in Table 1. Here, for PC, s
0
= 77.5 MPa and

0
= 8.7 10
26
s
1
have been used at T = 293 K.
2.2 Numerical model
The rate tangent formulation of the above constitutive
model closely follows the procedure outlined in Peirce
et al. (1984). Details of the formulation are available in
Wu and Van der Giessen (1993). The forward gradient
expression for the plastic strain rate is a linear interpo-
lation between its values at times t and t + t and is
given by,
Table 1 Material properties for PC
E/s
0
s
ss
/s
0
As
0
/T h/s
0
N C
R
/s
0
27 0.38 0.82 125 5.80 0.08 3 0.20
1 3 1 3
Three dimensional nite element investigations 5

p
= (1 )
p
(t ) +
p
(t +t ), (12)
where 0 1. Further, using a Taylors series
expansion for
p
(t +t ), we obtain,

p
=
p
(t ) +t

p

. (13)
Following Wu and Van der Giessen (1996) the rate form
of the constitutive equation for the back stress tensor
can be expressed as,

b = R: D. (14)
Using the above, the Jaumann rate of the Cauchy stress
tensor is nally expressed as

= L : D + , (15)
where the tangent modulus L is dened as
L = L
e
M M. (16)
Further, the vector can be expressed as
=

p
1 +
M, (17)
where,
M =
2G

. (18)
Also,
=
1

g(1 + )
, and (19)
and g are given as
g =
1

2
_
2G +
1

: R

_
, and,
= gt

p

.
The rate dependent incremental constitutive model
has beenimplementedinABAQUSv6.9usinga UMAT
routine. Eight noded brick elements were used in all
the analyses reported. The J integral (Rice 1968) is
calculated using a domain integral representation suit-
able for FE computations due to Nakamura et al.
(Shih et al. 1986).
2.3 Boundary conditions
All the simulations reported herein are performed on
SEN specimens (see Fig. 2) of width W, height 2L
and thickness 2B. The circular notch with center at the
origin has a radius of . The crack length a is cho-
sen such that a/W = 0.52. In the analyses reported,
L = 29 and W = 25 mm are kept xed while 2B and
are varied.
Using symmetry along the length and the thickness
of the specimen, only one-fourth (X
2
0 and X
3
0)
of the specimen is analysed and symmetry boundary
conditions are applied as:
u
2
(X
1
> a, 0, X
3
) = 0 (20)
and
u
3
(X
1
, X
2
, 0) = 0. (21)
The top surface of the specimen is pulled at a constant
velocity so that
u
2
(X
1
, L, X
3
) =
0
(t ), (22)
where

0
(t ) =

0
t. (23)
Inthe above, t is the time anda xedvalue of 1 mm/min
is used for

0
in all the runs.
Further, the following boundary condition is applied to
constrain the rigid body motion:
u
1
(25, 0, X
3
) = 0. (24)
For a load controlled specimen, the applied load P
on a SENspecimen can be related to the stress intensity
factor K
I
through a geometric factor f (a/W) as
K
I
=
P
2BW

a f
_
a
W
_
. (25)
For a displacement controlled situation, the applied K
I
can be related to the displacement using a simple
scheme that involves the crack length dependent com-
pliance C(a) of the sample. An estimate of the applied
stress intensity factor K
I
is thus obtained as
K
I
=
_
E
4BC
2
C
a
. (26)
The method of computation of compliance C(a) of a
SEN specimen is given in the Appendix. Note that
the value of K
I
obtained from Eq. (26) gives a refer-
ence value that we use to normalize certain quantities.
This may be thought of as the far eld K
I
experienced
by the sample under plane stress small scale yielding
conditions.
Typically about 1015 brick elements were used
across the thickness. The crack circumference was
divided into elements whose sides were approximately
/10 in the X
1
X
2
plane. The total number of ele-
ments used ranged from about 20,000 to 100,000.
1 3
6 B. Kattekola et al.
2.4 Brittle versus ductile behavior
We start with the assumption that brittle fracture in
PC occurs through the mechanism of crazing, which
depends on the mean stress for initiation. The critical
mean stress required for craze initiation in PC has been
reported by Narisawa and Yee (1993) to be between
8090MPa. Independent calibrations by Gearing and
Anand (2004) also corroborates this result. It should
be noted that craze initiation is a poorly understood
area (see eg. Bucknall 2007) and though a triaxiality
dependent craze initiation criterion had been suggested
many decades ago by Sternstein and Ongochin (1969),
it remains somewhat controversial.
In low triaxiality situations, Gearing and Anand
(2004) uses a criterion based on the maximum plastic
stretchaheadof the notchtip, i.e.
p

p
f
. Inthis work,
we use a criterion on the opening stress
22

f
as the
criterion for the onset of ductile tearing. This compet-
ing criterion for failure is motivated by the experiments
of Nisitani and Hyakutake (1985). Their experiments
show that, when failure occurs, at failure initiation, the
maximum opening stress
f
, seemed to correlate well
with 2B/. For large 2B/, (say 10), the value of

f
can be about 400 MPa.
Thus, in our simulations, initiation of failure will
mean that either
(a)
m
70MPa ahead of the notch tip, (void nucle-
ation criterion) or
(b)
22
400MPa at the notch tip (ductile tearing
criterion),
is satised. The above criteria are easy to apply and, as
we will see in the next section, provide a satisfactory
explanation of the brittle-ductile transitions that occur
with thickness 2B and notch radius .
The ductile tearing criterion (b) is motivated by
Nisitani and Hyakutake (1985). For the material under
consideration, a sufciently high opening stress neces-
sarily implies a high accumulated plastic strain and so,
the criterion (b) is equivalent to a critical accumulated
strain criterion (or a critical effective plastic stretch, as
used in Gearing and Anand (2004). Also, as
m
is eas-
ily related to the elastic volumetric strain, our initiation
criteria (a) and (b) are similar in spirit to those used by
Gearing and Anand (2004).
3 Results and discussions
We have done several three dimensional analyses on
SEN samples of PC using a range of values of 2B and
. In particular, we have varied 2B from 1 to 10 mm
and from 50 to 2500 m. For all runs, the value of
the J integral, J
c
, at which one of the above conditions
of failure are met is noted. While the value of J
c
allows
us to effectively track brittle-ductile transitions with
2B and , the purpose of these simulations is somewhat
wider. We start by looking closely at the region near the
notch tip with a view to gaining insights into the nature
of the three dimensional elasto-plastic elds and their
variations with 2B and .
3.1 Plastic zones and contours of mean stress
Our three dimensional analyses reveal that the shape of
the plastic zone, especially in thick specimens, changes
considerably from the surface of the specimen to the
interior. Figure 3(a)(c) show the plastic zones that
have developed at X
3
/B = 0 and 1 for three sam-
ples with 2B = 1, 4 and 10 mm respectively. For all
the cases, the notch radius is 200 m and the applied
K
I
3.3 MPa

m. The plastic zone is represented by

contours of
p
/
0
where

0
=
K
I
s
0

, (27)
is a normalizing factor.
The plastic zone in the thinnest sample (2B =
1 mm) grows ahead of the notch tip primarily in the X
1
direction and develops in a manner that is very similar
to the experimental observations for a similar geome-
try in Nisitani and Hyakutake (1985). At the surface,
the plastic zone is wider in the X
2
direction than in the
interior.
The shape of the plastic zone changes with thick-
ness. As the thickness increases, the plastic zones on
the surface of the specimen gradually tilt away from
the X
1
axis. This is evident in Fig. 3(b), (c) pertaining
to 2B = 4 and 10 mm respectively. Also, unlike for
the thin sample, the plastic zone extends much less in
the X
1
direction at the same level of applied K
I
. More-
over, the plastic zone at the surface and in the interior
now look quite different. In the interior, a typical kid-
ney shaped plastic zone is obtained whose extent in
the X
1
direction diminishes with thickness. The
p
/
0
1 3 1 3
Three dimensional nite element investigations 7
Fig. 3 Contours of normalized accumulated plastic strain in
specimens with = 200 m and thickness, 2B = (a) 1, (b)
4, (c) 10mm and the (d) plane strain scenario. In ac, the upper
half shows the plastic zone at center (X
3
/B = 0) and the lower
half at (X
3
/B = 1) the surface of the specimen
contours for a 2D plane strain case is also shown for
comparison (Fig. 3(d)).
The contours of mean stress
m
shown in
Fig. 4(a)(c) for the same cases as in Fig. 3 further
underlines the importance of thickness. For all the
cases, the regions of highest mean stress are located
in the interior. Evidently, the surface of the specimen
has lower mean stress values due to plane stress condi-
tions on the surface. However, for the thinest sample,
the levels of
m
on the surface and in the interior are
very close. In the thickest specimen on the other hand,
the mean stress on the surface is considerably lower. In
the interior of the thickest specimen, a region of high

m
develops ahead of the crack tip. This is the region
where the void nucleation criterion is likely to be sat-
ised. For thinner specimens such a region is not seen
ahead of the notch even in the interior of the speci-
men.
Shape and size of the plastic zone also varies with
the notch radius. This is shown in Fig. 5(a), (b) where
contours of normalized
p
have been plotted for thick
specimens (2B = 10 mm) with notch tip radius,
= 50 and 500 m. The contours have been plot-
ted in the interior of the specimen (X
3
/B = 0) at
an instant when one of the failure criteria was met.
Clearly, at the instant of failure, the size of the plas-
tic zone is the smallest for the specimen with the
sharpest notch. The plastic zone size as well as the
intensity of the maximum accumulated plastic strain

p
at failure increases with notch radius. In sum-
mary, Figs. 3, 4 and 5 demonstrate how thickness and
notch radius affect the nature of the plastic zone ahead
of a notch in PC. Firstly, thin samples tend to have
banded plastic zones running parallel to the line of
symmetry almost throughout their thickness. As thick-
ness increases, the bands on the surface become wider
and the plastic zone in the interior turns away from
the line of symmetry. With further increase in thick-
ness, the plastic zone both at surface and the interior
ceases to be banded and grows mainly in the X
2
direc-
tion.
At a constant thickness, very sharp notches give
rise to small plastic zones. The extent to which they
are banded depends on the thickness. With increase in
notch radius, the plastic zones get larger. Thus, for both
small values of and large values of B, the plastic zone
tends to be smaller compared to the cases with larger
and smaller B.
1 3
8 B. Kattekola et al.
Fig. 4 Contours of
m
in specimens with = 200 m and
thickness, 2B = (a) 1, (b) 4 and (c) 10mm. In each gure, the
upper half shows the plastic zone at center (X
3
/B = 0) and the
lower half at (X
3
/B = 1) the surface of the specimen
3.2 Variations of the J integral and stresses through
the thickness
The value of the J integral at X
3
/B = 0 has been
plotted against the applied load K
I
in Fig. 6. We have
Fig. 5 Contours of accumulated plastic strain at failure for spec-
imens with 2B = 10mm and notch radius = (a) 50 and (b)
500 m
chosen = 200 m for these plots while 2B = 1,
4 and 10 mm have been used. These correspond to
2B/ = 5, 20 and 50 respectively. The circles on
the plot indicate the values of J
c
at which one of the
competing failure criterion is met. Clearly, the value
of J(X
3
/B = 0) increases monotonically with the
applied load K
I
as expected. The thickest specimen
(2B = 10 mm or 2B/ = 50) fails in brittle manner
with the lowest value of J
c
= 5.46 N/mm compared to
the other two specimens which fail in ductile fashion
satisfying the ductile tearing criterion.
As indicatedinthe previous section, thickspecimens
with sharp notches seem to develop plastic zones sim-
ilar to thinner specimens with even sharper notches. In
fact, the ratio 2B/ seems to be a good indicator of the
failure modes in PC. For large 2B/, the failure mode
is brittle irrespective of the sample thickness. Simi-
larly, for smaller values of 2B/, the failure mode is
ductile.
1 3 1 3
Three dimensional nite element investigations 9
0 1 2 3 4 5
0
5
10
15
20
25
K
I
(MPa

mm)
J
(
N
/
m
m
)
2B =1mm
2B = 10mm
2B = 4mm
Fig. 6 Variation of J integral as a function of loading parameter
K
I
for specimens with different thicknesses and constant =
200 m
The above fact is further elaborated in Fig. 7(a), (b).
In the rst gure, variation of J through the thickness
X
3
/B is plotted for two cases with 2B/ = 200 and
20. Both these cases exhibit brittle failure. Irrespec-
tive of the wide difference in thickness, the two sam-
ples exhibit similar variation of J through the thickness.
Notably, the value of J at the surface and at the center
are about 30% different at the higher load, indicating
that brittle fracture is likely initiate inside the specimen.
This is also observed in the experiments by Parvin and
Williams (1975).
On the other hand, two samples with 2B/ = 4
are contrasted in Fig. 7(b). Both these samples fail in a
ductile manner. Consequently, the J varies through the
thickness in a similar manner, especially at low loads.
However, in this case, the difference in the values of
J(X
3
/B = 0) and J(X
3
/B = 1) are small indicating
the likelihood of self similar crack growth.
Further insights into the mechanics of fracture ini-
tiation can be obtained by studying the distribution of
the mean stress
m
ahead of the notch. The following
three gures show the variation of the mean stress at
levels of load close to the point at which one of the
failure criterion was met. As shown in Fig. 4(a), thin
specimens exhibit long contours of mean stress ahead
of the notch, the shape of which does not vary much
with thickness. Moreover, as shown in Fig. 8(a) for the
case with 2B = 1mm and = 250 m, the level of
mean stress ahead of the crack is also low through-
out the thickness. The low level of mean stress ahead
of the notch tip rules out the possibility of meeting
0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
0.25
0.50
0.75
1.00
1.25
X
3
/B
J
(
N
/
m
m
)
2B = 1mm
2B = 1mm
2B = 10mm
2B = 10mm
2B/ > 20
K
I
= 0.87MPa

mm
K
I
= 0 .43MPa

mm
0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
5
10
15
20
X
3
/B
J
(
N
/
m
m
)
K
I
= 3 .61MPa

mm
K
I
= 2 .16MPa

mm
2B = 1mm
2B = 1mm
2B/ = 4
2B = 10mm
2B = 10mm
(a)
(b)
Fig. 7 Variation of J integral across the thickness for the spec-
imens with (a) large and (b) smaller values of 2B/
the void nucleation criterion in these samples. The sit-
uation changes when the notch radius is reduced to
50 m (Fig. 8(b)). In this case, the mean stress attains
the void nucleation criterion at a very lowvalue of load.
Again, a thick specimen (2B = 10 mm) with a larger
value of (200 m) behaves quite in the same man-
ner. As shown in Fig. 8(c), the level of mean stress at
the center of this specimen attains a high enough value
when J at the center of the specimen is only about
0.86 N/mm.
The above gures illustrate the point that thick sam-
ples and ones with very sharp notches can develop
mean stresses high enough to meet the void nucle-
ation criterion at relatively low values of load. The
radius at which the void nucleation criterion will
be met depends on the thickness. On the other hand,
for thin samples and ones with large values of , the
1 3
10 B. Kattekola et al.
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
0
20
40
60
80
X
1
(mm)
m
(
M
P
a
)
X
3
/B = 0
X
3
/B
X
3
/B = 1
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
0
20
40
60
80
X
1
(mm)
m
(
M
P
a
)
X
3
/B = 0
X
3
/B = 0.4
= 0.4
X
3
/B = 1
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
0
20
40
60
80
X
1
(mm)

m
(
M
P
a
)
X
3
/B = 0
X
3
/B = 0 .4
X
3
/B = 1
(a)
(b)
(c)

Fig. 8 Variation of
m
with X
1
for (a) 2B = 1mm and =
250 m (b) 2B = 1mm and = 50 m and (c) 2B = 10mm
and = 200 m
triaxiality levels are low and the ductile tearing crite-
rion will need to be satised in order that fracture may
initiate.
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
50
100
150
200
250
300
(mm)
J
c
(
N
/
m
m
)
0 2 4 6 8 10
5
10
15
20
25
2B (mm)
J
c
(
N
/
m
m
)
(a)
(b)
Fig. 9 Variation of J integral with (a) at constant thickness
2B = 10mm and (b) thickness at constant = 200 m
3.3 Ductile-brittle transitions with thickness
and notch radius
In this section, we quantitatively summarize the nd-
ings from this investigation. In Fig. 9(a), and (b), we
have plotted the values of J
c
which is the value of the
J integral at the point where either the void nucleation
or the ductile tearing criterion was met. In Fig 9(a), the
thickness has been kept constant at 10mmand varied,
while in Fig. 9(b), the notch radius was 200 m.
With notch radius, a gradual transition from brittle
behavior characterized by very lowvalues of J
c
to duc-
tile tearing is seen. It should be noted that whenever the
void nucleation criterion is satised, initiation of failure
is likely to happen at the center of the specimen. On the
contrary, whenever ductile tearing happens, the mean
stress across the thickness is relatively constant. At the
1 3 1 3
Three dimensional nite element investigations 11
0 4 8 12
0.2
0.4
0.6
2B (mm)
(
m
)
Ductile
Brittle

Fig. 10 Mode of failure map on the 2B plane. The dashed

line approximately divides the plane into brittle () and ductile
() parts
thickness shown, the critical value of at which the
brittle-ductile transition happens is between 400 and
500 m which is commensurate with the experimental
trends in Nisitani and Hyakutake (1985).
On the other hand, a much sharper ductile to brit-
tle transition occurs with the sample thickness. For
= 200 m, samples with thickness below about
3mmexhibit ductile failure. Afailure map for commer-
cial PCcan be constructed on the 2B plane indicat-
ingthe failure mode for a giventhicknessnotchradius
combination. Using the failure criteria adopted in this
work, such a map has been shown in Fig. 10. Combi-
nations that fail in brittle manner have been denoted
by , while ductile ones are denoted by . The
line 2B/ 25.5 approximately separates the duc-
tile region from the brittle one.
4 Conclusions
We have conducted extensive three dimensional FE
simulations on displacement controlled SEN samples
of PC with a range of thicknesses and notch radii with
a view to understand the ductile to brittle transitions
that are commonly seen in fracture experiments on
this material. A well calibrated constitutive model is
used within the framework of large deformation elasto-
viscoplaticity. Simple but representative criterion for
failure initiation are devised assuming that the brittle
behavior is associated with crazing, which in turn is
facilitated by high triaxiality. On the other hand, ductile
failure takes over in low triaxiality geometries where
craze initiation is suppressed and large opening stresses
are required to cause tearing. Note that we are looking
at the initiation toughness of the specimen and steady
state crack growth may require higher loads.
We have analyzed the changes in plastic zone and
mean stress distributions that occur with changes in
either thickness or notch radius. Suitable combination
of these two geometric parameters can cause the triax-
iality levels all over the thickness of the specimen to
drop leading to suppression of void nucleation.
Our simulations are able to showthat with thickness
a ductile- brittle transition occurs in PC. Similarly, a
ductile-brittle transition occurs with notch radius. For
a given thickness, the critical notch radius at which
the transition happens depends on the thickness of the
specimen. A critical value of the ratio of the thickness
to the notch radius of about 25.5 seems to separate the
brittle zone from the ductile in a failure map.
Appendix: Determination of K for a displacement
controlled SEN specimen
Consider that C(a) is the compliance of a specimen
with a crack of length a, and a displacement has been
applied to it in a manner shown in Fig. 2. The force P
is related to the displacement by
= C(a)P, (28)
and the total strain energy stored is
U =
1
2
P =
1
2

2
C(a)
. (29)
The energy release rate G is related to the rate of change
of the strain energy per unit crack area and thus
G =
1
2B
U
a
, (30)
which, in terms of the compliance becomes (using
Eq. 28),
G =
1
4B
P
2
C
a
. (31)
Further, since we want to use the value of K
I
as a
reference, we choose
G =
K
2
I
E
, (32)
which gives the plane stress (small thickness) approx-
imation to K
I
.
1 3
12 B. Kattekola et al.
Textbooks of fracture mechanics (see, eg. Kumar
2009) routinely give Mode I stress intensity factors for
standard specimens like the SEN, in terms of P. For a
SEN specimen in particular, the relation reads:
K
I
=
P
2BW

a f
_
a
W
_
, (33)
where the function f (x) = 1.12 0.23x +10.55x
2

21.72x
3
+30.39x
4
. Comparing Eqs. 33 and 31 gives
C
a
=
a
BW
2
f
2
_
a
W
_
, (34)
which, on integration, gives
C(a) C(0) =
a
BW
a/W
_
0
f
2
(x)dx. (35)
Further, note that C(0), the compliance when there is
no crack, is given by
C(0) =
L
2BWE
. (36)
Knowing C(a), G and hence K
I
can be obtained from
Eq. (31).
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