Charpy Impact Test

Charpy impact tests provide an easier alternative to LEFM tests and are used to grade
the deterioration of the material.

From: Materials Ageing and Degradation in Light Water Reactors, 2013

Related terms:

Pendulums, Irradiation, Charpy, Izod, Low-Temperature, Reactor Pressure Vessel

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4.2.4.1.3 Charpy impact test and analysis

The Charpy impact test helps determine the impact energy absorbed and failure
mode. Two different Charpy specimens of bulk Sn–Ag–Cu specimen and soldered
specimen as shown in Fig. 4.2.75 are used in the test. For soldered specimen, two
copper blocks are soldered together with Sn–Ag–Cu solder after reflow process.
Two cases are studied for soldered specimen: copper block with and without Ni/Au
plating. Three samples are tested for each type of Charpy specimen. Fig. 4.2.76
shows the fracture modes for different specimens. The bulk specimen exhibits
ductile failure, and soldered specimen shows all brittle interface failure. Table 4.2.15
lists the impact toughness for different specimens. The bulk solder specimen has
the largest toughness value. The impact toughness of soldered specimen without
Ni/Au plating is twice higher than that with Ni/Au plating. It implies that electronic
assembly with Sn–Ag–Cu solder and Ni/Au finish is liable to impact failure compared
with the case without Ni/Au finish, which is consistent with drop test results for the
PBGA package mentioned above. Cu/Sn IMC is formed between copper block and
Sn–Ag–Cu solder, while Cu-Ni-Sn IMC is formed when Ni/Au plating is used. The
Charpy impact test results prove that when the drop failure mode shows IMC brittle
failure, package with ENIG board surface finish has lower drop lifetime than that
with OSP board surface finish.

Figure 4.2.75. Charpy impact test specimens: (a) soldered specimen, and (b) bulk

Sn–Ag–Cu specimen.

Figure 4.2.76. Failure mode under Charpy impact test: (a) brittle failure for soldered
specimen, and (b) ductile failure for bulk Sn–Ag–Cu specimen.

Table 4.2.15. Impact toughness for different specimens.

Specimens Bulk Sn–Ag–Cu Soldered sample with- Soldered sample with

out Ni/Au Ni/Au
Impact toughness (J) 74.0 0.261 0.118

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Edition), 1998

Example 2.23
A series of Charpy impact tests on uPVC specimens with a range of crack depths gave
the following results

Crack length 1 2 3 4 5
(mm)
Fracture Ener- 100 62 46.5 37 31
gy (mJ)

If the sample section is 10 mm × 10 mm, and the support width is 40 mm calculate

the fracture toughness of the uPVC. The modulus of the uPVC is 2 GN/m2.

Solution
Since B = D = 10 mm and using the values of from Table 2.3 we may obtain the
following information.

a(mm) a/D BD U(mJ)

1 0.1 0.781 78.1 × 10–6 100
2 0.2 0.468 46.8 × 10–6 62
3 0.3 0.354 35.4 × 10–6 46.5
4 0.4 0.287 28.7 × 10–6 37
5 0.5 0.233 23.3 × 10–6 31

A graph of U against BD is given in Fig. 2.84. The slope of this gives Gc = 1.33 kJ/m2.

Fig. 2.84. Plot of Uc against BD

Then from equation (2.108) the fracture toughness is given by

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9.1.9.1 Loading technique

Early studies on dynamic fracture toughness of materials used pendulum impact
test (the so-called Charpy impact test) or drop-weight test with notched specimens.
It should be noted that such loading technology, on the one hand, is difficult
to achieve high loading rate; on the other hand, more importantly, it is difficult
to quantitatively analyze the stress wave effect in the specimen and loading device.
Therefore, it has gradually been eliminated by other more perfect loading technology
(projectile impact, explosion, and electromagnetic loading) as shown in Table 9.6
(see e.g., Ravi-Chandar, 2004), which have already covered in the previous sections
of this chapter and in the previous chapters of this.

Table 9.6. Range of loading rate and crack initiation time tf for different loading
techniques.

Quasistatic Drop-weight Projectile im- Explosion Electromagnet-

loading pact ic loading
Loading rate- 1 104 104–108 105 105
, MPa·m1/2·s-
−1
Time to frac- >106 100 1–100 1–20 10–100
ture (μs)

Recall Fig. 9.8 when discussing the dynamic crack initiation toughness of materials,
and Fig. 9.30 and Fig. 9.31 when discussing the dynamic crack arrest toughness
of materials; those results were obtained by Ravi-Chandar and Knauss (1984a) by
using the electromagnetic loading technology with adjustable load amplitude and
duration. The principle of this electromagnetic loading technology is schematically
illustrated in Fig. 9.36.

Figure 9.36. Principle of crack loaded by electromagnetic pressure pulse.

A flat copper strip is folded back on itself and the space between the two layers is
filled with an insulating strip. This assembly is then introduced into the crack of
single-edge crack specimen (Fig. 9.36a). When a pulse current flows through the
copper loop, each leg generates a magnetic field. The current vector in each leg
interacts with the magnetic field of the other leg to produce an electromagnetic
repulsion that forces the conductors apart. The two legs press upon the top and
bottom surfaces of the crack with a uniform pressure (Fig. 9.36b). The trapezoidal
pulse duration can be adjusted within the range of 150μs with a rising time in about
25μs. The pressure on the crack surface can be adjusted in the range of 1–20 MPa,
and the loading rate is in the order of . The major advantages of electromagnetic
loading are: (i) it provides good repeatable loading that makes experiments easy; (ii)
the experiment has been finished before the stress wave reflected from the specimen
boundary back to the crack tip and can be modeled as a pressurized semiinfinite
crack in an unbounded medium, so that is easy to analyze. Moreover, the dynamic
crack initiation toughness of the material (Fig. 9.8) and the dynamic crack arrest
toughness of the material (Fig. 9.30 and Fig. 9.31) can be carried out in the same
experiment.

Projectile impact is a typical method to generate a high loading rate. Recall the
plate impact experiment discussed in Chapter 4 “dynamic experimental study of
state equation of solids under high pressure”, in which a flyer launched by gas gun
impacts onto a target (specimen), and recall the Hopkinson bar technique discussed
in Chapter 7 “dynamic experimental study of material distortion law”, both belong
to the projectile impact technology list in Table 9.6. Different from the drop-weight
technique which directly impacts specimen by falling mass, the projectile impact
loading technique is essentially loaded by stress waves.

A typical example of the dynamic fracture toughness experiment of materials adopt-

ing plate impact technique is shown in Fig. 9.37 (Ravichandran and Clifton, 1989).
The 4340 steel circular plate specimen with the thickness of h and a circumferential
precrack across half of its cross-section is impacted at velocity v0 by a flyer with the
thickness of h/2 driven by a gas gun. An incident compressive trapezoidal pulse is
first applied to the specimen (without effect on crack extension), and after reflected
from the free surface of the specimen, a tensile pulse load required by the experiment
is formed at the crack of half thickness of the specimen. By varying v0 and h, the
load magnitude and duration (in the order of μs) can be adjusted. After analyzing
the particle velocity history on the back surface of the specimen measured by the
laser interferometer (VISAR), the dynamic stress intensity factor (in the order of
100 MPa·m1/2) can be obtained. The corresponding loading rate achieved in these
experiments is as high as 108 MPa·m1/2 s−1. first increases with time t and is
proportional to t1/2, which is consistent with the analytical solution as shown in
Fig. 9.6. After crack initiation and propagation, then decreases with time, as shown
in Fig. 9.37B.

Figure 9.37. Dynamic fracture toughness experiment for cracked plate specimen

impacted by flyer.From Ravichandran G., Clifton R.J., 1989. Dynamic fracture under
plane wave loading. Int. J. Fract. 40, 157–201, Fig. 2, p.163, Fig. 15, p.182. Reprinted
with permission of the publisher.

Hopkinson bar technique has been adopted to conduct experimental research on dy-
namic fracture toughness of materials by more and more researchers (e.g., Kalthoff,
1986; Jiang and Vecchio, 2009), which has become more and more popular and
mature.

The Hopkinson bar experiment technique has already introduced in detail in chapter
7 of this book. Here, we focus on its application in the study of dynamic fracture
toughness of materials.

Costin et al. (1977) first used the Hopkinson bar principle to study the dynamic crack
initiation toughness of materials, as schematically shown in Fig. 9.38. The specimen
is a long round rod with a circumferential precrack. An explosive charge is detonated
at one end of the specimen, generating a tensile pulse applied on the specimen. Two
strain gauges are mounted to both sides of the precrack of the long rod specimen.
The measured incident waves, reflected waves, and transmitted wave are used to
determine the dynamic crack initiation toughness of the material. Crack initiation
occurs in the range of 20–25μs, and the loading rate reaches 106 MPa·m1/2·s−1.
However, because the long rod specimen itself plays the role of both Hopkinson
incident bar and transmission bar at the same time, it consumes a lot of material
and requires high processing technology.

Figure 9.38. Circumferential precracked rod specimen subjected to a tensile pulse

generated by an explosive charge.

In addition to directly apply the tensile stress wave loading to the precracked
specimen, the specimen can also be loaded through the Hopkinson compressive
bar. In such case, a tensile stress wave can be generated by reflecting the incident
compressive stress wave from the free surface of the short specimen (Stroppe et al.,
1992), as schematically shown in Fig. 9.39. It is assumed that the compressive wave
first passing through the specimen has no effect on the crack. Some researchers
(e.g., Lee et al., 2002) added a free sleeve to the short-cracked specimen, which was
fixed between the Hopkinson incident bar and the transmitting bar (see Fig. 7.7 in
Chapter 7), so that the incident compressive wave in the incident bar propagates
into the transmitted bar through the sleeve, while the tensile wave reflected at the
free end of the transmitted bar then loads the cracked specimen.
Figure 9.39. Cracked specimen loaded by the reflected tensile pulse using Hopkin-
son pressure bar.

The above is to load the cracked specimen by tensile stress. On the other side, based
on the split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) experimental technique, researchers
have also developed a variety of ways to use compressive stress wave to load cracked
samples.

Fig. 9.40 schematically shows that a compact compression (CC) specimen is directly

compressively loaded by compressive pulse in an SHPB apparatu-s (see e.g., Rittel
et al., 1992).

Figure 9.40. Compact compressed specimen loaded by compression pulse.

A wedge-loaded compact tension specimen (WLCT specimen) is loaded by com-

pressive pulse using an SHPB apparatus (see e.g., Klepaczko, 1979), as schematically
illustrated in Fig. 9.41. The WLCT specimen is placed between the loading wedge
and the transmitted bar.

Figure 9.41. WLCT specimen loaded by compression pulse.

The SHPB apparatus is also especially suitable for dynamic three-point bending test
to various cracked specimen by using compression pulses, which is convenient for
the measurement of dynamic fracture toughness of materials.
Fig. 9.42 schematically shows a single-edge cracked specimen loaded in the
one-point bend (1 PB) mode by compression pulse propagating through the Hop-
kinson incident bar (see e.g., Ruiz and Mines, 1985). If the single-edge cracked
specimen and the loading mode are the same as that of the usual Charpy test, it can
be regarded as an improved Charpy test that can take into account the stress wave
effect and thus can reliably determine the dynamic initiation toughness of materials
(Weisbrod and Rittel, 2000).

Figure 9.42. Single-edge cracked specimen loaded by compression pulse.

In addition to the one-point bend (1 PB) test mentioned above, researchers have
also developed a variety of dynamic experimental techniques for three-point bend
(3 PB) specimens using Hopkinson pressure bar (Jiang and Vecchio, 2009) to study
the dynamic fracture toughness of materials, as shown in Fig. 9.43 (see e.g., Mines
and Ruiz, 1985), Fig. 9.44 (see e.g., Jiang and Vecchio, 2007), and Fig. 9.45 (see e.g.,
Yokoyama and Kishida, 1989).

Figure 9.43. Three-point bend (3 PB) cracked specimen loaded by a single incident

bar (1bar/3 PB).

Figure 9.44. Three-point bend (3 PB) cracked specimen placed between the incident
bar and the transmission bar (2bar/3 PB).
 Figure 9.45. Three-point bend (3 PB) cracked specimen placed between the incident
bar and double transmission bars (3bar/3 PB).

Fig. 9.43 shows that compression pulse loading is directly applied to the three-point
bending crack sample by using a single incident bar.

Fig. 9.44 shows that the compression pulse loading is applied to the three-point
bending cracked specimens sandwiched between the incident bar and the transmis-
sion bar.

Fig. 9.45 shows that the three-point bending cracked specimen sandwiched between
the incident bar and the double transmission bar is subjected to compression pulse
loading.

Mainly the Mode-I cracked specimens are discussed above. Similarly, the Hopkinson
pressure bar technique can also be developed to study dynamic fracture toughness
on Mode-II cracked specimen. As shown in Fig. 9.46, Dong et al. (1998) adopted
Hopkinson pressure bar apparatus to load a single-edge parallel double-cracks
specimen to study the interaction between crack initiation and adiabatic shear
for Mode-II crack. In the test, the incident bar is arranged in contact with the
specimen at the position between the parallel double cracks; a compression pulse is
transmitted to the specimen through the incident bar, resulting in a Mode-II fracture
(see Chapter 10.1.5 “Interaction between adiabatic shear bands and cracks”).

Figure 9.46. Experimental study on dynamic fracture toughness of Mode-II crack by

Hopkinson pressure bar (Dong et al., 1998).

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