MECHANICALBEHAVIOROF

MATERIALS

FRACTURE TOUGHNESS

• Ref. 1 (CAP. 5)
• Ref. 2 (Cap. 5,6,7)
• Ref. 4 (Cap. 8)
• Ref. 7 (9 Y 10)
TOUGHNESS
The toughness of a given material is a measure of the energy absorbed
before and during the fracture process.
The area under the uniaxial tensile stress–strain curve would provide
one measure of toughness

If the energy is high (such as for curve C), the material is said to be
tough or to possess high fracture toughness.

Conversely, if the energy is low (e.g.,

curves A and B), the material is described
as brittle or having low fracture toughness.
 TOUGHNESS
The relative toughness or brittleness of a given
material subjected to different conditions may be
estimated by noting the extent of plasticity
surrounding the crack tip.
Since much more energy is dissipated during
plastic flow than during elastic deformation, the
toughness of a sample should increase with the
volume of the crack-tip plastic zone.
when the plastic zone is small just before failure, the overall toughness level of the
sample is low and the material is classified as relatively brittle. On the other hand,
were plasticity to extend far from the crack tip, the energy to break would be high
and the material would be relatively tough.

It is important to note that a normally tough material can fail with relatively low
toughness if the geometry of the component reduces the capacity for plasticity
(e.g., by introducing a tri-axial stress state or the environment modifies the material
behavior).
FRACTURE MECHANICS
Discussion on fracture in terms of crack surface displacement and the stresses at
the tip of the crack is the fracture mechanics approach.

The stress concentration at a crack tip is denoted in terms of the stress intensity
factors KI, KII, and KIII.
In mode I, the largest principal stress is oriented perpendicularly to the crack surface
and tensile stresses open the crack and thus separate the surfaces.

In modes II and III, the crack surfaces are loaded in shear. These modes do not
open the crack. When the load is applied, the crack surfaces slide with friction and
thus dissipate part of the external work.
FRACTURE MECHANICS
Mode I loading is encountered in the overwhelming majority of actual engineering
situations involving cracked components. Consequently, considerable attention has
been given to both analytical and experimental methods designed to quantify Mode I
stress–crack-length relations.

We assume that the stress field can be described as plane stress and that the
material is linear elastic, homogeneous, and isotropic.

r and φ are the coordinates of a polar coordinate system centred at the crack tip.
KI: the stress intensity factor
Y: a geometry factor
 FRACTURE MECHANICS
KI: stress intensity factor
Y: geometry factor

If we increase the load and thus the

stress intensity factor KI, the crack
will propagate when KI reaches a
certain critical value, the fracture
toughness KIc

where σc is the critical stress which

will lead to crack propagation for a
crack of initial length 2a.
 FRACTURE MECHANICS
A component with a known crack length “a” can resist a given stress only if:

• the yield strength is not reached defined according to Tresca or von Mises,
• the cleavage strength is not reached
• the stress intensity factor is smaller than the fracture toughness: KI < KIc.

Depending on the crack length, a ductile, pre-cracked material will fail by plastic
collapse or crack propagation.
The crack length at which the material will fail by crack propagation, and not by
plastic collapse, depends on the yield strength Rp and the fracture toughness KIc.
The transition between the two can be estimated by calculating the critical crack
length ac
FRACTURE MECHANICS

Rcm: the compressive strength for ceramics

FRACTURE MECHANICS
Materials situated in the upper left of the diagram show large critical crack lengths
and tend to fail by plastic collapse; for materials in the lower right part, the critical
crack length is small and the tendency to fail by crack propagation is large.
 PLANE-STRAIN FRACTURE-
TOUGHNESS TESTING
Since the fracture toughness of a material will depend on the volume of
material capable of plastically deforming prior to fracture, and since this volume
depends on specimen thickness, it follows that the fracture toughness Kc will vary
with thickness.
When the sample is thin (for example, at t1) and
the degrees of plastic constraint acting at the
crack-tip minimal, plane-stress conditions prevail
and the material exhibits maximum toughness.

Alternatively, when the thickness is increased to

bring about plastic constraint and plane-strain
conditions at the crack tip, the toughness drops
sharply to a level that may be one-third (or less)
that of the plane-stress value.
The fracture toughness under plane strain
conditions is often measured using Mode I loading
If this is the case, then the critical value is called KIC
in recognition of the loading mode.
MEASURING FRACTURE TOUGHNESS
A common feature of the experiments is that the test specimens are pre-cracked.
Among the most common specimen geometries:

• Three-point bending specimen

• Compact tension specimen
MEASURING FRACTURE TOUGHNESS
FRACTURE TOUGHNESS MEASUREMENT
IMPACT FRACTURE TESTING
Engineers sought convenient laboratory-sized samples and suitable test conditions
with which to simulate field failures without resorting to the forbidding expense of
destructively testing full-scale engineering components.
Three basic factors contribute to a brittle-cleavage type of fracture:

(1) a triaxial state of stress

(2) a low temperature (It can be related to the temperature-sensitive Peierls-Nabarro
stress contribution to yield strength, which is much larger in BCC metals than in
FCC metals.
(3) A high strain rate or rapid rate of loading.
IMPACT FRACTURE TESTING
 TOUGHNESS AND STRENGTH
Toughness would be highest when an
optimum combination of strength and
ductility is developed.
The most desirable approach would
involve shifting the curve up and toward
the right so that the material might exhibit
both higher strength and toughness for a
given condition.

These improvements may be realized in two general ways:

1. Developing optimum microstructures to maximize toughness.

2. Avoiding impurities, processing conditions, or environments that degrade
toughness.
INTRINSIC TOUGHNESS
Materials with high intrinsic toughness are resistant to crack nucleation and crack
propagation, and provide a consistent resistance to crack growth.

The more rigidly fixed a material’s valence electrons are, the more brittle the
material is likely to be.
Since covalent bonding involves sharing of valence electrons between an atom
and its nearest neighbors only, materials such as diamond, graphite, silicon,
silicon carbide, and gallium arsenide tend to be very brittle.
Ionic bonding is less restrictive to the location of valence electrons.
Metallic bonding, on the other hand, provides the least restriction to valence
electron movement; valence electrons are shared equally by all atoms in the solid.
These materials generally have the greatest deformation capability and the
greatest intrinsic toughness.
INTRINSIC TOUGHNESS

Brittle behavior is more prevalent in materials of low crystal symmetry for which
slip is more difficult.
As an example, the stabilization of the FCC form of iron rather than the BCC
isomorph in a steel alloy contributes to greatly enhanced toughness.

One way to accomplish this is by incorporating a certain amount of nickel to form

an austenitic steel. The Peierls-Nabarro stress (lattice friction) level in the FCC
lattice is much reduced compared to BCC and the low-energy cleavage fracture
micromechanism is averted.
At the extreme opposite end of the crystal structure trend, amorphous materials
such as silicate glasses have no ability to slip via dislocation motion and
therefore typically exhibit very low intrinsic toughness.
INTRINSIC TOUGHNESS OF POLYMERS

Intrinsic toughness of polymers is somewhat more complicated to summarize using

the preceding trends because multiple bond types are present (i.e., covalent and
secondary) and there are no slip planes.

Temperature and strain rate can play major roles in energy-dissipating plasticity

molecular weight, crosslink density, crystallinity, plasticizers, and chain side group
and chain branch chemistry influence intrinsic toughness in polymers.

The presence of secondary bonds and the network nature of polymer materials lead
to low intrinsic toughness.
EXTRINSIC TOUGHENING
EXTRINSIC TOUGHENING