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Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series

Alex Arzoumanidis · Meredith Silberstein


Alireza Amirkhizi Editors

Challenges in
Mechanics of Time
Dependent Materials,
Volume 2
Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Conference on
Experimental and Applied Mechanics
Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series

Series Editor
Kristin B. Zimmerman Ph.D.
Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc.
Bethel, CT, USA

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8922


Alex Arzoumanidis • Meredith Silberstein • Alireza Amirkhizi
Editors

Challenges in Mechanics of Time


Dependent Materials, Volume 2
Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Conference on Experimental
and Applied Mechanics
Editors
Alex Arzoumanidis Meredith Silberstein
Psylotech, Inc Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Evanston, IL, USA Cornell University
Ithaca, NY, USA

Alireza Amirkhizi
UMass Lowell North Campus, Perry 332
University of Massachusetts
Lowell, MA, USA

ISSN 2191-5644 ISSN 2191-5652 (electronic)


Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series
ISBN 978-3-319-63392-3 ISBN 978-3-319-63393-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63393-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015952466

# The Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. 2018


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Preface

Challenges in Mechanics of Time-Dependent Materials represents one of nine volumes of technical papers presented at the
SEM 2017 Annual Conference and Exposition on Experimental and Applied Mechanics organized by the Society for
Experimental Mechanics and held in Indianapolis, IN, in June 12–15, 2017. The complete proceedings also includes the
following volumes: Dynamic Behavior of Materials; Advancement of Optical Methods in Experimental Mechanics;
Mechanics of Biological Systems, Materials and other topics in Experimental and Applied Mechanics; Micro- and
Nanomechanics; Mechanics of Composite, Hybrid and Multifunctional Materials; Fracture, Fatigue, Failure and Damage
Evolution; Residual Stress, Thermomechanics & Infrared Imaging, Hybrid Techniques and Inverse Problems; and Mechan-
ics of Additive and Advanced Manufacturing.
Each collection presents early findings from experimental and computational investigations on an important area within
experimental mechanics, the mechanics of time-dependent materials being one of these areas.
This track was organized to address constitutive, time (or rate)-dependent constitutive, and fracture/failure behavior of a
broad range of materials systems, including prominent research in both experimental and applied mechanics. Papers
concentrating on both modeling and experimental aspects of time-dependent materials are included.
The track organizers thank the presenters, authors, and session chairs for their participation and contribution to this track.
The support and assistance from the SEM staff is also greatly appreciated.

Evanston, IL, USA Alex Arzoumanidis


Ithaca, NY, USA Meredith Silberstein
Lowell, MA, USA Alireza Amirkhizi

v
Contents

1 Experimental Characterisation of the Mechanical Properties of the Clay-Rock/Concrete


Interfaces and Their Evolution in Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Eleni Stavropoulou, Matthieu Briffaut, Frédéric Dufour, and Guillaume Camps
2 Coupled Anisothermal Chemomechanical Degradation Solutions in One Dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
M. Anguiano, H. Gajendran, R.B. Hall, and A. Masud
3 Time-Temperature Analysis, DMA and Compression in PBXs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Darla Graff Thompson, Jamie Stull, Racci Deluca, and Geoff Brown
4 Statistical Life Time Prediction Under Tension Loading for Unidirectional CFRP
with Thermoplastics as Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Masayuki Nakada, Yoko Morisawa, and Yasushi Miyano
5 Time and Temperature Dependence on Tensile Strength of Unidirectional CFRP
with Various Carbon Fibers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Yasushi Miyano, Yoshiki Kobayashi, and Masayuki Nakada
6 Time Temperature Superposition and Prony Series Coefficients of Asphalt Roof
Shingle Material from Viscoelastic Creep Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Sreehari Rajan, Michael A. Sutton, Ryan Fuerte, and Igor Emri
7 A Mixture Theory with Interactive Body Forces for Composite Interphases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
R.B. Hall
8 Material Creep Behavior with Prediction of Tertiary Creep Failure
by a Spherical Micro-indentation Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Dumbi C. Otunyo and Bruce S. Kang
9 Mechanical and Biodegradable Behavior of AZ31 Magnesium Alloy
Immersed in Simulated Body Fluid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Wenxue Lin, Ning Zou, and Qizhen Z. Li
10 Failure of Laser Welded Structures Subjected to Multiaxial Loading:
Experimental Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Bonnie R. Antoun and Kevin Connelly
11 Characterization and Modeling of PEEK in Histories with Reverse Loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Wenlong Li, George Gazonas, Eric N. Brown, Philip J. Rae, and Mehrdad Negahban
12 A Biomimetic Composite for Space Vehicle/Habitat Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Ashok Kumar Ghosh, Ramon Martinez, and Carl M. Cady

vii
viii Contents

13 Molecular Dynamics Motivated Maxwell Element Spring Nonlinearity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79


G.A. Arzoumanidis, T.J.L. Mustard, M.D. Halls, and Stephen Christensen
14 Characterization and Simulation of Time-Dependent Response of Structural
Materials for Aero Structures and Turbine Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Stephan M. Russ, Reji John, and Craig P. Przybyla
Chapter 1
Experimental Characterisation of the Mechanical Properties of the
Clay-Rock/Concrete Interfaces and Their Evolution in Time

Eleni Stavropoulou, Matthieu Briffaut, Frédéric Dufour, and Guillaume Camps

Abstract The delayed mechanical behaviour of the clay-rock/concrete interface under shear stress has been experimentally
investigated. After a first characterisation of the short-term response of the interface with direct shear tests, long duration
shear tests under constant normal load have been performed with a new experimental apparatus which was developed for this
study. The response of the interface in time is discussed.

Keywords Interface • Creep • Shear test • Clay-rock • Concrete

1.1 Introduction

In the context of the underground nuclear waste disposal projects in deep argillaceous geological formations in several
countries, Underground Research Laboratories (URL’s) have been developed in order to demonstrate the underground
isolation. The French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (ANDRA) is studying the behaviour of a deep
geological radioactive repository in Callovo Oxfordian clay-rock (known as COx) in Bure, France. Such projects require
prediction of irreversible deformations over a large time scale, in order to asses the durability of the confinement.
The sealing of the underground repository tunnel, is partly ensured by a mechanical barrier made of concrete, directly in
contact with the rock. Thus, the delayed mechanical behaviour of the clay-rock/concrete interface is of a large interest. The
amplitude of delayed strains depends on the material and test conditions. The state of stress determines the mode of failure of
the sample and the brittle-ductile transition [2]. Gonze [3] showed that for higher deviatoric stresses, the strain rate increases.
Zhang and Rothfuchs [8] showed that clay-rock creeps already under very low stress of 2 MPa, indicating that a lower creep
limit seems not to exist for this clay-rock. Concerning the delayed behaviour of concrete, many studies have shown that the
obtained creep deformation doesn’t increase proportionally with the increase of the applied loading levels [6, 7]. Pons and
Torrenti [5] showed that for applied charge lower than 50% of the compressive strength of concrete, the delayed strain rate
decreases with time.
Although the physical properties of most of the materials involved (rock, concrete and bentonite mixtures) are extendedly
studied, there have been few studies on the behaviour of the contact interfaces between these materials. The scientific goal of
this work involves the understanding of the creep mechanism of the interface of two materials and more specifically whether
the interface itself highlights its own creep mechanism, independently of the creep of both materials in contact. An
experimental campaign on the mechanical characterisation of the interface of the underground concrete gallery with the
host rock in time has been developed and will be presented.

E. Stavropoulou (*)
University of Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP (Institute of Engineering University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France),
3SR, F-38000, Grenoble, France
Agence Nationale pour la gestion des Déchets Radioactifs (ANDRA), 92290 Châtenay-Malabry, France
e-mail: eleni.stavropoulou@3sr-grenoble.fr
M. Briffaut (*) • F. Dufour
University of Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP (Institute of Engineering University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France),
3SR, F-38000, Grenoble, France
G. Camps
Agence Nationale pour la gestion des Déchets Radioactifs (ANDRA), 92290 Châtenay-Malabry, France

# The Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. 2018 1


A. Arzoumanidis et al. (eds.), Challenges in Mechanics of Time Dependent Materials, Volume 2,
Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63393-0_1
2 E. Stavropoulou et al.

1.2 Experimental Campaign

The investigation of the mechanical behaviour of the clay-rock/concrete interface in time, required a study of the short-term
response, performing shear tests with the BCR3D apparatus (a 3D shear box for rocks, [4]). This device allows shearing
under constant normal stress or constant normal volume with the application of symmetrical and opposite displacement on
the joint’s active part. Samples of COx (78mmØ) have been moulded in shear boxes with the studied concrete, as shown in
Fig. 1.1. Short-term shear tests under constant normal volume (with applied normal stress up to 12 MPa) have been
performed, in order to characterise the elastoplastic behaviour of the joints. The results have been analysed using the Mohr-
Coulomb failure criterion, allowing the evaluation of the resistance of the interface in shearing.
The characterisation of the mechanical behaviour of the interface in time, required the design of a new experimental
device. For the purpose of this work, SInC Box (Shear-Interfaces-Creep Box) has been developed, a sophisticated device
which allows the study of an interface in shearing under long duration load. SInC Box is based on the existing creep devices
in traction for intact samples [1] and introduces a second loading axis, orthogonal to the existing one. It is designed in a way,
so that the normal force is centered in the mean plane of the interface and the applied shear force passes the axis of the
interface (Fig. 1.1(1 and 2)). The application of a normal and a shear load, is followed by the measurement of the relative
shearing displacement (Fig. 1.1c), as well as dilatancy/contraction, allowing the demonstration of the failure mode of the
interface.

1.3 Test Results

Several tests have taken place on samples of clay-rock/concrete interface, in temperature controlled environment (20  C) and
under different constant normal stress. The results of three tests are presented. The application of the normal load is followed
by the application of a shear load. Test 1 was performed under normal stress σn ¼ 6 MPa and shear stress τ ¼ 2.7 MPa which
we maintained constant throughout the entire test. In Test 2, under σn ¼ 8 MPa, an initial shear stress of τ ¼ 1.3 MPa was
followed by an increase to 2.5 MPa. Finally, Test 3 was performed under normals stress σn ¼ 10 MPa and shear stress
τ ¼ 3.8 MPa.
For the analysis of the results of a long-duration test, the instantaneous elastoplastic response of the interface is taken into
account. Figure 1.2a shows the ratio τ/ τmax for each test, where τmax is the calculated instantaneous shear resistance for the

Fig. 1.1 Left: Sample illustration; (a) 3D concept of the two half shear boxes, (b) Vertical cut illustration the interface of the two geomaterials, (c)
Illustration of the applied forces (Fn normal force, Ft shear force, to the mean plane of the interface) and the relative shear displacement (dut) of the
two half shear boxes. Right: SInC Box zoomed in, illustrating the position of the sample and the application of the two orthogonal loads; (1) normal
force transducer, (2) shear force transducer, (3) sample moulded in the two half-shear boxes (rotated by 90 )
1 Experimental Characterisation of the Mechanical Properties of the Clay-Rock/Concrete Interfaces and Their. . . 3

(*103 )
1.2 12

83%
1 10

compliance (µ m/m/MPa)
8
0.8
6
0.6 74%
83%
4
σ σ
0.4 σ 2 54% σ
σ 29% σ

0.2 0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
time (h) time (h)

Fig. 1.2 (a) Evolution of the ratio of applied shear stress over shear strength, (b) compliance of the shear response

given normal stress. The evolution of the measured compliance in shearing is presented in Fig. 1.2b, where the compliance is
calculated as the delayed shear strain over the applied shear stress (εxy/ τ).
Observing the initial evolution of the compliance between the three tests (t ¼ 0 ! t ¼ 100 h), one can notice that the
measured compliance increases faster for higher shear strength levels. Although this observation is not obvious for Tests
1 and 3, given the similar levels of applied shear stress (83% and 74%), it is more clear for Test 2. Indeed for a low τ/
τmax ¼ 29%, the compliance is very low and gets quickly stabilised. An increase from 29% to 54% leads to an increase of
the rate of compliance, being though lower than the rates of Tests 1 and 3. In all three tests the measured product εxy/τ
increases non linearly in time, with a decreasing rate. This response indicates the existence of delayed deformations within
the primary phase.

1.4 Conclusions/Perspectives

The delayed behaviour in shearing of the COx/concrete interfaces has been experimentally investigated. The development of
a new apparatus (SInC Box) allowed measurement of the deformation of the interface in time, in both normal and tangential
direction. For the applied stress paths and the given duration of the tests, only primary creep was observed.
The study of creep in interfaces is complex, as it involves the evolution in time of two different materials. The obtained
delayed response can be the result of the delayed response of each material or of the interface itself independently. The
results of longer duration tests are going to be discussed.

References

1. Fabre, G., Pellet, F.: Creep and time-dependent damage in argillaceous rocks. Int. J. Rock Mech. Min. Sci. 43(6), 950–960 (2006)
2. Gatelier, N.: ETUDE EXPERIMENTALE ET THEORIQUE DE L’ENDOMMAGEMENT DES ROCHES ANISOTROPES. Diss. (2001)
3. Gonze, P.: Techniques de calcul utilisées en congélation des terrains. La thermomecanique des roches. 16, (1988)
4. Hans, J., Boulon, M.: A new device for investigating the hydro-mechanical properties of rock joints. Int. J. Numer. Anal. Methods Geomech. 27
(6), 513–548 (2003)
5. Pons, G., J. M. Torrenti. “Retrait et fluage.” La durabilité des bétons: bases scientifiques pour la formulation de bétons durables dans leur
environnement, Ollivier JP, Vichot A., Presses de l’École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. 167–216 (2008)
6. Roll, F.: Long-time creep-recovery of highly stressed concrete cylinders. Spec. Publ. 9, 95–114 (1964)
7. Sellier, A., Buffo-Lacarriere, L.: Towards a simple and unified modelling of basic creep, shrinkage and drying creep of concrete. Eur. J. Environ.
Civil Eng. 13(10), 1161–1182 (2009)
8. Zhang, C., Rothfuchs, T.: Experimental study of the hydro-mechanical behaviour of the Callovo-Oxfordian argillite. Appl. Clay Sci. 26(1),
325–336 (2004)
Chapter 2
Coupled Anisothermal Chemomechanical Degradation Solutions
in One Dimension

M. Anguiano, H. Gajendran, R.B. Hall, and A. Masud

Abstract This paper focuses on thermal oxidation of Silicon Carbide (SiC) – a key process of degradation in aircraft turbine
components. In this work, passive oxidation is considered, which produces amorphous silica that is accumulated on top of
the SiC substrate. The mathematical problem is formulated within the context of mixture theory (Gardiner G (2017)
Aeroengine composites, Part 1: the CMC invasion. Composites World 31 July 2015: n. pag. Web. 06 Mar; Jacobson, J
Am Ceram Soc 76(1):3–28, 1993), which allows to model multi-constituent behavior – fluid and solid in this case – within
the same continuum domain, while retaining interaction terms between constituents. Preliminary isothermal results have
shown that the phenomena of interest are captured: expansion due to chemical reaction, change in solid density from
unreacted to fully-oxidized material, interactive force among constituents, and stress variation across reaction zone. The
method presented considers the anisothermal evolution of the problem.

Keywords Anisothermal • Ceramic matrix composite • Passive oxidation • Silicon Carbide

For numerous applications, modern and forthcoming engineering materials must be designed to perform in harsh thermal
and/or chemical environments and numerical methods capable of simulating those conditions are required. In the case of
aeronautical applications, one such group of materials is ceramic matrix composites (CMCs). Due to their thermo-
mechanical properties [1] that allow them to perform stably at high temperatures, CMCs are making their way from into
more areas of the turbine, replacing metallic alloy materials, which require coolant flow to be kept at working performance
temperatures [2]. Some manufactures expect a tenfold increase on the use of CMCs in their engines over the next decade [2],
as improvements in manufacturing and analysis techniques permit production of components of more complex geometry.
However, CMCs are subjected to chemical degradation through oxidation at high temperatures [2–5]. This paper focuses on
thermal oxidation of silicon carbide (SiC) – a key process of degradation in aircraft turbine components. It is also a process
of interest in the electronics industry as it is one of the techniques involved in the manufacturing of semiconductors, where
thermal oxidation is performed deliberately to create an insulating oxide layer [6–8].
The mechanisms of thermal oxidation of SiC have been categorized as either active or passive [3–5]. In the former, the
products of reaction include volatile silicon oxide species that are lost to the surrounding environment and leave more of the
SiC exposed. In contrast, passive thermal oxidation produces amorphous silica that is accumulated on top of the SiC
substrate. Temperature and pressure determine which regime of thermal oxidation will occur [4]. In this work, the passive
oxidation is considered.
A schematic description of passive oxidation process of SiC is presented in Fig. 2.1: oxygen (O2) in-diffuses through the
solid, reaches substrate material (SiC), and reacts to form solid silicon dioxide (SiO2) and gaseous carbon monoxide (CO).
The chemical reaction that occurs between the O2 and the SiC is described by the following chemical equation:

3
SiCðsÞ þ O2ðgÞ ! SiO2ðsÞ þ COðgÞ ð2:1Þ
2

M. Anguiano • H. Gajendran • A. Masud


University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
e-mail: manguin2@illinois.edu; amasud@illinois.edu
R.B. Hall (*)
Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH, USA
e-mail: richard.hall.16@us.af.mil

# The Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. 2018 5


A. Arzoumanidis et al. (eds.), Challenges in Mechanics of Time Dependent Materials, Volume 2,
Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63393-0_2
6 M. Anguiano et al.

Fig. 2.1 SiC oxidation


diagram

This process exhibits steep gradients in the properties of the solid (SiC/SiO2) and in oxygen concentration across the
domain. Moreover, substantial volume changes occur, as the amorphous silica produced by reaction occupies ~2.2 the
volume of SiC it replaces. Both of these situations pose numerical challenges in simulations, which are addressed by the
method presented in the sequel.
The mathematical problem is formulated within the context of mixture theory, which allows to model multi-constituent
behavior – fluid and solid in this case – within the same continuum domain, while retaining interaction terms between
constituents. One fundamental assumption of mixture theory is that the different constituents co-occupy the same continuum
domain. The balance equations governing the problem are formulated for each individual constituent and for the mixture,
and the constituent level equations contain source-like terms that describe the interaction between constituents. Addition-
ally, we adopt the constitutive relations derived through the imposition of the maximization of entropy production rate from
the work in [9].

2.1 Modeling Assumptions and Methodology

We adopt the assumption made in [10] in which the constituent free energies, entropies, and internal energies can be written
in suitable condensed forms, which in turn imply that the constituent temperatures are equal to each other:

ψ f ¼ ψ s ¼ ψ, ηf ¼ ηs ¼ η, εf ¼ εs ¼ ε, θf ¼ θs ¼ θ ð2:2Þ

In addition, the rapport between the mechanical deformation and extent of reaction is strong, as reaction induces a
doubling in volume; thus, it is desirable to solve the system of equations in a fully coupled fashion, since a staggered
approach can potentially introduce inaccuracies in capturing this strongly coupled behavior. Moreover, algorithmic splits in
staggered approaches impede optimal rates of convergence. An evolving internal variable measures the extent of the reaction
throughout the domain; alternatively, this internal variable can also be understood as the measuring the amount of substrate
material (SiC) currently available for reaction.
Based on existing work [10], a consistently derived Variational Multi-Scale Stabilized (VMS) Finite Element Method is
developed to solve the coupled, nonlinear PDEs that arise from conservation laws and mixture theory constitutive relations.
The solution fields are fluid (O2) density and velocity; solid (SiC/SiO2) density and displacement; and mixture temperature.
The stabilization terms arise from the split of the fluid field into coarse and fine scales. Carbon monoxide (CO) is assumed to
diffuse out instantaneously and its mass is accounted for through stoichiometric relations. The FEM interpolation is done
within an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) mesh, which proves suitable to model the diffusion of the fluid constituent
(O2) through the deforming solid (SiC/SiO2). From the point of view of the fluid, the mesh is an ALE frame, while from the
point of view of the solid, the mesh is Lagrangian, and nodal points are solid material points.
2 Coupled Anisothermal Chemomechanical Degradation Solutions in One Dimension 7

2.2 Linearized Temperature Form of the Mixture Energy Balance

The linearized temperature form of the mixture energy balance is derived using concepts from [11] in the context of the
mixture theory presented in [9]. We begin by considering the balance of energy for the mixture (combination of all
constituents):

dε X2 X2
ρ ¼ div ðρα εα uα Þ þ trðTα Lα Þ  divq þ ρτ
dt α¼1 α¼1 ð2:3Þ
1      
 mf vf  vs  vf  vs  I f  vf  vs
2

Through the assumptions made and neglecting the internal dissipation term, followed by appropriate manipulations,
including the linearization of the temperature field, we arrive at the following expression:
 
 
€ þ ρc0  θref μ ρ_ f þ ρ_ s cθ ϑ_
θref μcθ ϑ
ρ ð2:4Þ
divq þ ρτ þ ρmθF : F_ s þ ρmθs ρ_ s þ ρmθf ρ_ f ¼ 0

Where:

2 2 2 2
∂ ψ ∂ ψ ∂ ψ s ∂ ψ f
c0 ¼ θref , mθF ¼ θref , mθs ¼ θref ρ_ , mθf ¼ θref ρ_ ð2:5Þ
∂ϑ2 ∂Fs ∂ϑ ∂ρs ∂ϑ ∂ρf ∂ϑ

2.3 Balance Equations

Based on the modeling assumptions and within the context of mixture theory, the one-dimensional conservation laws can be
written as follows:

dρα ∂v α
Balance of mass : þ ρα 1  mα ¼ 0 ð2:6Þ
dt ∂x

α
∂T 11 dv α
Balance of Linear Momentum : þ ρα b1 þ I 1α  ρα 1 ¼ 0 ð2:7Þ
∂x dt

   
d2 ϑ μ dρf dρs dϑ
Balance of Energy : θref μcθ 2 þ ρc0  θref þ cθ
dt ρ dt dt dt ð2:8Þ
∂q dρ s
dρf
 1 þ ρτ þ ρmθF F_ 11
s
þ ρmθs þ ρmθf ¼0
∂x dt dt

2.4 Constitutive Equations

Accordingly, the constitutive relations considered are given by the following expressions:

∂ψ ∂ψ
s
T 11 ¼ ρF11  ρs ρ s ð2:9Þ
∂F11 ∂ρ

f
f ∂ψ L ∂v1
T 11 ¼ ρf ρ þ μA ð2:10Þ
∂ρf ∂x
8 M. Anguiano et al.

   
I 1f ¼ mf v1f  v1s  μAv v1f  v1s ð2:11Þ

 
I 1s þ ms v1s ¼  I 1f þ mf v1s ð2:12Þ

∂ϑ
q1 ¼ θref μl11 ð2:13Þ
∂x

mf ¼ Γ_ 011 ¼ R0 ρf ϕ ð2:14Þ

 
c1s θ 1  f 
s s s s 2
ψ ¼ A þ ðB þ c Þðθ  θ Þ  ðθ  θ Þ  c2 θ ln s þ
ss
Rθρ þ k2f ρf
 2  θ ρT
    2 ð2:15Þ
ρs 1 s 1
þ s λ þ μTs þ αs þ 2 μLs  μTs þ βs E11 s
 αTs θs  θref þΛ
ρρT 2 2

Z
μ   0 2   s   
Λ¼ Γ11 K 1 E11  αTs θs  θref þ 2Γ_ 011 A0Γ dΓ011 ð2:16Þ
2

1 _0
2
1 4 Γ 11Γ011 ρK1 E11 s
μ¼   2  2 ð2:17Þ
2 ∂v1f  2  2 1 0  0 2
AL ∂x
þ cθ ϑ2 þ Av v1f  v1s  ρA0Γ Γ_ 011 þ l11 ∂ϑ
∂x
 2 Γ_ 11 Γ11 ρK1 E11
s

Preliminary isothermal results have shown that the phenomena of interest are captured: expansion due to chemical
reaction, change in solid density from unreacted to fully-oxidized material, interactive force among constituents, and stress
variation across reaction zone. It may be possible to explore other interesting behaviors as different material properties or
functional form dependencies are considered. For instance, the variation of solid density from unreacted to fully oxidized
material may or may not be monotone in its evolution, depending on whether the chemo-mechanical coupling is through the
cube (or some other power) of the extent of reaction. From a physical standpoint, this is due to two competing processes by
which solid concentration changes: (1) rate of mass incorporated to solid by reaction, and (2) rate of expansion due to
reaction. The nature of this density evolution may be material/process dependent, and should be confirmed by experiments.
Finally, the method presented constitutes a more general approach than the ones commonly used in the literature [6, 7]
first, in that it considers and solves for the transport of oxygen from the boundary to the reaction zone separately from the
incorporation of mass from the fluid to the solid at the reaction zone, and secondly, in that it considers the anisothermal
evolution of the problem. This will allow for the treatment of more complex geometries, a more varied range of material
properties, and a wider class of processes in future work. Consider for instance the same problem of thermal oxidation of
SiC, where the rate of reaction is anisotropic. In particular, when the SiC crystal is oriented such that C-face is exposed to
oxygen, it exhibits faster reaction rates than when the Si-face is [8]. Thus, for multi-dimensional geometries, where different
facets may be simultaneously exposed to oxygen, predicting the growth of the oxide scale requires accounting for this
anisotropy in the chemical reaction term, while the diffusion through the oxide remains an isotropic process.

References

1. Snead, L.L., Nozawa, T., Katoh, Y., Byun, T.S., Kondo, S., Petti, D.A.: Handbook of SiC properties for fuel performance modeling. J. Nucl.
Mater. 371(1–3), 329–377 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2007.05.016
2. Gardiner, G.: Aeroengine Composites, Part 1: The CMC Invasion. Composites World 31 July 2015: n. pag. Web. 06 Mar. (2017)
3. Jacobson, N.S.: Corrosion of silicon-based ceramics in combustion environments. J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 76(1), 3–28 (1993). https://doi.org/
10.1111/j.1151-2916.1993.tb03684.x
4. Jacobson, N.S., Myers, D.L.: Active oxidation of SiC. Oxid. Met. 75(1–2), 1–25 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11085-010-9216-4
2 Coupled Anisothermal Chemomechanical Degradation Solutions in One Dimension 9

5. Smialek, J., Jacobson, N. S.: Oxidation of high-temperature aerospace materials. In: High Temperature Materials and Mechanisms,
pp. 95–162. CRC Press, Boca Raton. https://doi.org/10.1201/b16545-6 (2014)
6. Song, Y., Dhar, S., Feldman, L.C., Chung, G., Williams, J.R.: Modified deal grove model for the thermal oxidation of silicon carbide. J. Appl.
Phys. 95(9), 4953–4957 (2004). http://doi.org/10.1063/1.1690097
7. Hijikata, Y., Yaguchi, H., Yoshida, S.: A kinetic model of silicon carbide oxidation based on the interfacial silicon and carbon emission
phenomenon. Appl. Phys. Express. 2(2), 1–3 (2009). http://doi.org/10.1143/APEX.2.021203
8. Hijikata, Y., Yagi, S., Yaguchi, H., Yoshida, S.: Thermal oxidation mechanism of silicon carbide. In: Hijikata, Y. (ed.) Physics and Technology
of Silicon Carbide Devices, pp. 181–206. doi: 10.5772/50748. Available from: https://www.intechopen.com/books/physics-and-technology-
of-silicon-carbide-devices/thermal-oxidation-mechanism-of-silicon-carbide (2012)
9. Hall, R., Rajagopal, K.R.: Diffusion of a fluid through an anisotropically chemically reacting thermoelastic body within the context of mixture
theory. Math. Mech. Solids. 17(2), 131–164 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1177/1081286511407754
10. Hall, R., Gajendran, H., Masud, A.: Diffusion of chemically reacting fluids through nonlinear elastic solids: mixture model and stabilized
methods. Math. Mech. Solids. 20(2), 204–227 (2015). http://doi.org/10.1177/1081286514544852
11. Truesdell, C., Noll, W., Antman, S.S.: The non-Linear Field Theories of MechanicsBerlin. Springer, Heidelberg/Berlin (2004)
Chapter 3
Time-Temperature Analysis, DMA and Compression in PBXs

Darla Graff Thompson, Jamie Stull, Racci Deluca, and Geoff Brown

Abstract The mechanical response of plastic-bonded explosives (PBXs) is highly complex and depends on a number of
factors including, but not limited to temperature, strain rate and binders. In this work, we have measured and analyzed the
mechanical properties of LX-14, which contains 95.5 wt% HMX (octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine) and
4.5 wt% Estane 5702, with no additional plasticizer. We are interested to compare LX-14 with PBX 9501 (95 wt% HMX,
2.5 wt% Estane 5703 and 2.5 wt% nitroplasticizer), which has a relatively high content of plasticizer. The measurements
span a wide range of strain rates and temperatures. We have applied time-temperature analysis on the LX-14 mechanical
properties, i.e. dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) measurements and quasi-static uniaxial compression to form satisfac-
tory master curves, and these data are compared with those from PBX 9501. A unique inhomogeneity is observed in the
LX-14 compression data as a function of the specimen location.

Keywords Explosives • Mechanical testing • DMA • Material science • HMX

3.1 Introduction

The addition of polymeric binders to formulated high explosives was to primarily increase the safety of these materials in
applications. Plasticizers are small molecules that are also sometimes included in PBX formulations. They are dispersed in
the polymer and lower its glass transition temperature, causing the room-temperature properties of the material to be softer
and more pliable. The mechanical properties of plasticized composites tend to be lower in strength and in modulus, and
higher in ductility than their unplasticized counterparts.
PBX 9501 and LX-14 are HMX-based formulations that primarily differ by the presence/absence of plasticizer. PBX
9501 is 95 wt% HMX, 2.5 wt% Estane 5703 and 2.5 wt% nitroplasticizer. The nitroplasticizer is a eutectic mixture of
bis(2,2-dinitropropyl)Acetal/Formal (abbreviated here as BDNPA/F or also simply NP). LX-14- contains 95.5 wt% HMX
and 4.5 wt% Estane 5702, with no plasticizer.
Time-temperature superposition principles, developed for and widely applied in the thermal-mechanical analysis of
polymers [1–4], have also been successfully applied to PBX composites [5, 6] including PBX 9501. We are interested to
compare the master curve response for LX-14 that was obtained previously with PBX 9501, to better understand the role of
the plasticizer.

3.2 Experimental

A uniaxial die was used to compact LX-14 molding powder to a cylinder approximately 6 inches in diameter by 5 inches in
height. The target density was 1.830 g/cm3. Cores were removed down the axis of the part. From each core, three
compression test specimens were machined, 28.6 mm long by 9.5 mm diameter. Compression specimens were marked as
top, center or bottom, relating to which part of the pressing they were taken from. Additionally, rectangular bars were
machined with their long axis aligned with the axis of the pressing, 0.1 inch  0.5 inch  1.77 inch.
Immersion density measurements were performed in water on all specimens prior to testing. The density of a silicon
standard was also measured/verified. Specimens were desiccated 10 days before testing commenced.

D.G. Thompson • J. Stull (*) • R. Deluca • G. Brown


Los Alamos National Laboratory, High Explosive Science and Technology, LA-UR 17-21652, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
e-mail: jamie.stull@lanl.gov

# The Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. 2018 11


A. Arzoumanidis et al. (eds.), Challenges in Mechanics of Time Dependent Materials, Volume 2,
Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63393-0_3
12 D.G. Thompson et al.

Table 3.1 Compression test conditions, number of tests


Crosshead speed (in/min), Strain rate (in/in/s) 50  C 23  C 10  C 15  C
0.01, 0.000148 3 3 3 3
0.1, 0.00148 3 3 3 2
1.0, 0.0148 3 3 3 2
10.0, 0.148 0 2 0 0

Fig. 3.1 Immersion densities


Compr, Top
for LX-14 specimens; see
legend for specimen type and Compr, Center
location 1.832 Compr, Bottom
DMA
1.830

LX-14 Immersion Density


1.828

1.826

1.824

1.822

1.820

1.818
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Specimen #

LX-14 compression tests were conducted remotely to failure on an Instron 5567 workstation with an MTS-upgraded
controller. A Bemco Environmental Chamber was used to control the temperature. The test conditions are listed in Table 3.1.
For all tests, thermal ramps were conducted at 1  C/min, and specimens soaked at target temperatures 30 min prior to testing.
All tests were crosshead rate controlled, and specimen strain was measured using two oppositely-mounted knife-edge
extensometers.
A TA Instruments Q800 DMA in combination with a duel cantilever clamp was used to measure the LX-14 specimens. At
each 3  C step in temperature between 100 and 100  C, the method applied a 10 μm displacement at five different
frequencies (0.3, 1, 3, 5 and 10 Hz). Rectangular specimens 0.1 inch  0.5 inch  1.77 inch, flat and parallel to within
0.001 inch, were machined from hydrostatically pressed billets. Temperature control was performed using liquid nitrogen
and an electric heating element.

3.3 Results

Immersion densities are plotted in Fig. 3.1 versus arbitrary specimen number. Data have been color-coded to indicate
specimen type/location. Likely the 1.830 g/cm3 target density of the large cylinder was not reached as all but one specimen
shows a density below this value. Furthermore, there is evidence of a significant density gradient, as all of the “bottom”
specimens are on the order of 0.006 g/cm3 lower than the “top” and “center.” Note that the six rectangular DMA specimens
span the density range of the compression specimens.
In Fig. 3.2 are plotted the stress versus average strain curves for all of the LX-14 compression tests. Colors and line styles
are used to indicate temperatures and strain rates, respectively. As is typical with PBX materials, over this range of
temperatures and strain rates, the effect of temperature on the material response is much greater than the effect of strain rate.
DMA measures the in-phase (storage) and out-of-phase (loss) elastic modulus as a function of the displacement of the
oscillating frequency and temperature. Tan delta is the ratio of the storage modulus to the loss modulus. The displacement
amplitude applied should be small enough to avoid exceeding the elastic limit of the material. In Fig. 3.3 we have plotted the
storage modulus, loss modulus and tan delta versus temperature. The peak near 25.04  C in the loss modulus curve arises
from the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the soft segment of the Estane binder. In the tan delta trace, it is slightly lower at
a temperature of 22.03  C. These values are near those previously reported for the Tg of Estane in LX-14 [4].
3 Time-Temperature Analysis, DMA and Compression in PBXs 13

Fig. 3.2 Stress versus strain average for all LX-14 compression tests; legend indicates temperature and strain rate
Strorage Molulus (MPa)

Fig. 3.3 DMA results of


LX-14 at a frequency of 1 Hz 5000
include (a) storage modulus, 4000
A
(b) loss modulus and (c) tan 3000
delta 2000
1000

−100 −50 0 50 100


Loss Modulus (MPa)

500

400

300 B

−100 −50 0 50 100

0.3
Tan Delta

0.2

0.1 C
0
−100 −50 0 50 100
Temperature (C)

3.4 Time-Temperature Analysis

For the purposes of analysis, stress-strain curves are often characterized using three parameters: maximum stress, σm, which
is the highest stress value achieved before failure of the material; strain at maximum stress, εm, which is the strain value
corresponding to σm; modulus, E25, which is the slope of the linear elastic portion of the stress-strain curve at 25% of σm. In
this paper we will use only the first two parameters. In Fig. 3.4a, we have plotted all values of σm and εm as a function of log
(strain rate).
14 D.G. Thompson et al.

50 50
(a) (b)
Maximum Stress (MPa)

Maximum Stress (MPa)


40 40

30 30

20 50°C 20
23°C 50°C
10 10
10°C 23°C
-15°C 0 10°C
0 3.0
2.8 -15°C
2.8
Strain at Max Stress (%)

Strain at Max Stress (%)


2.6 2.6
2.4 2.4
2.2 2.2
2.0 2.0
1.8 1.8
1.6 1.6
1.4 1.4
1.2 1.2
1.0 1.0
-4.0 -3.5 -3.0 -2.5 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4
log(Strain Rate) log(Strain Rate)

50

(c)
Maximum Stress (MPa)

40

30

20
50°C
10
23°C
0 10°C
2.4
-15°C
2.2
Strain at Max Stress (%)

2.0
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
-8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4
log(Strain Rate)

Fig. 3.4 LX-14 Compression parameters max stress and strain at max stress plotted versus log(strain rate). (a) all parameters as measured; (b) all
parameters after time-temperature shift to 23  C equivalent test temperature using 10  C/decade rate; (c) shifted data, same as (b), but with all
“top” located specimens removed. See legend for test temperatures

The development and application of time-temperature superposition principles to polymers [1–4] and to PBXs [5, 6] are
covered elsewhere. For the sake of brevity, we present the simplified relationship used by Siviour [2], in which the change in
strain rate is proportionally related to differences in test temperature using a single constant, A:
 
ε_ ref 1 
logaT ¼ log ¼ T ref  T ð3:1Þ
ε_ A

We apply this equation to the parameters in Fig. 3.4a by selecting 23  C as our reference temperature, i.e. data collected at
all other temperatures will be shifted to a new position on the log(strain rate) axis according to time-temperature
equivalence, to the position where it would have been with testing at 23  C. By analyzing the data collected at different
3 Time-Temperature Analysis, DMA and Compression in PBXs 15

0.056 0.35
173 K
182 K
0.054 191 K
200 K 0.3

0.052 209 K
218 K
227 K 0.25
0.05 236 K
245 K
0.048 254 K 0.2
Tan Delta

Tan Delta
263 K
272 K
0.046
281 K
290 K 0.15
0.044 299 K
308 K
317 K 0.1
0.042
326 K
335 K
0.04 344 K 0.05
353 K
362 K
0.038
371 K
0
−0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 −20 −10 0 10 20 30
(a) log(Frequency) (b) log(Frequency)
5500
5500

5000
5000

4500
4500

4000 4000
Storage Modulud (MPa)
Storage Modulud (MPa)

3500 3500

3000 3000

2500 2500

2000 2000

1500 1500

1000 1000
−0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 −20 −10 0 10 20 30

(c) log (Frequency) (d) log(Frequency)

Fig. 3.5 LX-14 DMA results (a) as-measured and (b) time-temperature shifted values of tan delta and (c) as-measured and (d) time-temperature
shifted values of storage modulus. Temperatures are listed in the legend

temperatures, and solving for log(_ε ref ), a “by-eye” best fit of the A parameter was performed. For the data plotted in Fig. 3.4b
and c, we used A ¼ 10  C/(decade rate). Maximum stress parameters, now shifted to an equivalent test temperature of
23  C, form the master curve shown at the top of Fig. 3.4b. The strain values at maximum stress values are also time-
temperature shifted. For many PBXs, the strain master curve shows a contiguous trend, but usually only a small change, as a
function of the shifted strain rate.
In Fig. 3.5a and c, the storage modulus and the tan delta (loss/storage) response have been plotted at different
temperatures as a function of frequency. In Fig. 3.5b and d, the same storage modulus and tan delta values are plotted,
but on a frequency-shifted axis. The data were shifted using Eq. 3.1 with A ¼ 5  C per decade frequency.
16 D.G. Thompson et al.

Fig. 3.6 Wicket plot for 0.35


LX-14 DMA data (tan delta
versus storage modulus)
0.3

0.25

0.2

Tan Delta
0.15

0.1

0.05

0
1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
Storage Modulus (MPa)

A Wicket plot of the data is plotted in Fig. 3.6, which is the tan delta versus the storage modulus. This plot is intended to
verify the time-temperature assumption of one relaxation time corresponding to a single transition. This is confirmed if the
data from a curve is in the shape of an arch or a croquette wicket [3]; however, Fig. 3.6 reveals that there is only a very small
temperature range between ~235 K and 253 K where the specimen adheres to the principles of the time-temperature
superposition.

3.5 Discussion

Close analysis of the raw uniaxial compression data in Fig. 3.2 shows a disturbing inconsistency. Most test conditions have
three test specimens, and very often one of the three specimens gives rise to a stress-strain curve that extends much further to
the right than the others, showing failure at slightly lower loads and much higher strains. As specimen locations were
randomized for testing, we predicted that these outliers would prove to be the “bottom” specimens, the low-density outliers
shown in Fig. 3.1. Contrary to this, however the anomalous curves were ALL shown to arise from the “top” specimens.
Based on the mapping of density gradients in large die-pressed cylinders by Olinger et al. [7], we believe that a large density
gradient may have formed at the top of the large as-pressed cylinder. When the small compression cylinders were removed,
those from the top layer had average densities that were nearly identical to those from the center layer, see Fig. 3.1. We
believe, however, that the density distribution of the top-layer specimens must have been asymetric, with a significantly
higher density region seated adjacent to a low density region. These data are novel observations, where mechanical property
differences are observed as a function of location, and yet cannot be correlated with density or underlying texture
differences. We believe that the absence of plasticizer in LX-14 reduces the flow of the binder during pressing, having an
effect on the homogeneity of the density in the final pressed part. In Fig. 3.4c, we have removed all compression parameters
from top-located specimens. Note, in particular, how this removes the high values of the strain at maximum stress and the
trend line is narrowed.
The master curve of the LX-14 compressive stress maximum shows apparent adherence to the principles of time-
temperature superposition which are the basis for Eq. 3.1. The value of A ¼ 10  C/(decade rate) for LX-14 compression is
very similar to the best-fit value of A ¼ 8  C/(decade rate) for PBX 9501 [6]. In Fig. 3.7, for comparison, we overlay the
compression master curves for both of these materials. The maximum stress master curve clearly shows the softening effect
of the plasticizer in PBX 9501. Interestingly, the addition of the plasticizer does not result in an increase of the strain at
maximum stress, an effect we might have predicted. As observed with PBX 9501 [6], the DMA master curves of the LX-14
storage modulus and tan delta, given in Fig. 3.5, show apparent adherence to time-temperature principles. However, the
Wicket plot analysis, Fig. 3.6, cautions that only a very narrow range of temperature shows a time-temperature agreement.
We plan to repeat these quasi-static compression and DMA measurements on LX-14 specimens with more uniform density.
3 Time-Temperature Analysis, DMA and Compression in PBXs 17

Fig. 3.7 Comparative overlay


50°C, LX-14
of quasi-static compression
master curves for LX-14 (solid 23°C
symbols) and PBX 9501 (open 10°C
symbols) -15°C
50 23°C, PBX 9501

Maximum Stress (MPa)


-15°C
40 0°C
40°C
30 50°C

20

10
0
2.4
2.2

Max Stress (%)


2.0
1.8

Strain at
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4
log(Strain Rate)

3.6 Conclusion

We have performed quasi-static compression and DMA testing on specimens obtained from a large die-pressed cylinder of
LX-14. We have performed time-temperature superposition analysis on these data with some success. Direct master curve
comparison has been made between LX-14 and PBX 9501, showing the effect of the plasticizer. However, the LX-14
compression data, coupled with the immersion density values, provide our first-ever observation of mechanical property
variation that correlates with specimen location in a pressing, but not caused directly by the specimen density.

References

1. Williams, M.L., Landel, R.F., Ferry, J.D.: The temperature dependence of relaxation mechanisms in amorphous polymers and other glass
forming liquids. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 77, 3701–3707 (1955)
2. Siviour, C.R., Walley, S.M., Proud, W.G., Field, J.E.: The high strain rate compressive behaviour of polycarbonate and polvinylidine difluoride.
Polymer. 46, 12546–12555 (1984)
3. Menard, K.P.: Dynamic Mechanical Analysis, a Practical Introduction, 2nd edn. CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, Boca Raton (2008)
4. Hoffman, D.M.: Dynamic mechanical signatures of a polyester-urethane and plastic bonded explosives based on this polymer. J. Appl. Polym.
Sci. 83, 1009–1024 (2002)
5. Williamson, D.M., Siviour, C.R., Proud, W.G., Palmer, S.J.P., Govier, R., Ellis, K., Blackwell, P., Leppard, C.: Temperature-time response of a
polymer bonded explosive in compression (EDC 37). J. Phys. D. Appl. Phys. 41, 85404–85414 (2008)
6. Thompson, D.G., DeLuca, R., Brown, G.W.: Time-temperature analysis of plastic-bonded explosives PBX 9501 and PBX 9502 in tension and
compression. J. Energ. Mater. 30(4), 299–323 (2012). LA-UR 11-07068
7. Olinger, B.W., Dobratz, B.M., Skidmore, C.B.: Density variations in cylinders and hemispherical shells of pressed PBX 9501 and PBX 9502.
23th aging, compatibility, and stockpile stewardship conference proceedings, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND2001-8038, CA, November
14–16, p. 133 (2000)
Chapter 4
Statistical Life Time Prediction Under Tension Loading
for Unidirectional CFRP with Thermoplastics as Matrices

Masayuki Nakada, Yoko Morisawa, and Yasushi Miyano

Abstract We have proposed the life prediction method for the statistical creep failure time under the tension loading along
the longitudinal direction of unidirectional CFRP from the statistical static strengths of unidirectional CFRP measured at
various temperatures. First, a method of predicting the statistical creep failure time of CFRP is explained briefly based on
Christensen’s model of viscoelastic crack kinetics. Second, two types of unidirectional CFRP which consist of carbon fiber
T300–3000 with thermosetting resin and thermoplastics as matrices, respectively. Third, the static strengths of these
unidirectional CFRPs are experimentally and statistically measured at various temperatures. Then the creep failure times
of these unidirectional CFRPs are predicted statistically using the statistical static strengths at various temperatures. Finally,
the creep failure times of these unidirectional CFRPs are measured experimentally using these unidirectional CFRPs for
comparison with the predicted ones.

Keywords Carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastics • Creep failure time • Statistical life time • Prediction • Viscoelasticity

4.1 Introduction

Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) have been used for the primary structures of airplanes, ships, automobiles and other
vehicles for which high reliability must be maintained during long-term operation. Therefore, an accelerated testing
methodology is strongly anticipated for the long-term life prediction of CFRP structures exposed to actual environmental
temperatures, water, and other influences.
The mechanical behavior of matrix resin of CFRP exhibits time and temperature dependence, called viscoelastic
behavior, not only above the glass transition temperature Tg, but also below Tg. Consequently, it can be presumed that the
mechanical behavior of CFRP depends strongly on time and temperature [1–5]. Our previous papers have proposed the
formulation of statistical static, creep, and fatigue strengths of CFRP based on the viscoelasticity of matrix resin [6, 7].
The tensile strength along the longitudinal direction of unidirectional CFRP constitutes important and basic data for the
reliable design of CFRP structures. The authors developed a test method for the creep and fatigue strengths as well as the
static strength at elevated temperatures by using the resin-impregnated carbon fiber strands (CFRP strands) combined with
T300–3000 and epoxy resin [8]. Our most recent study undertook the prediction of statistical creep failure time under tension
loading along the longitudinal direction of unidirectional CFRP performed using CFRP strands of T300–3000 and epoxy
resin. The statistical creep failure time of CFRP strands at a constant load and temperature was predicted using statistical
results of static tensile strengths of CFRP strands measured at various temperatures and the viscoelastic behavior of matrix
resin. The predicted results quantitatively agree well with the experimentally obtained results measured using creep tests for
CFRP strands [9].
As described herein, the proposed method of predicting the statistical creep failure time under the tension loading along
the longitudinal direction of unidirectional carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastics (CFRTP) from the statistical static
strengths of unidirectional CFRTP measured at various temperatures is clearly valid quantitatively. First, a method of
predicting the statistical creep failure time of CFRTP from the statistical static strengths of CFRTP measured at various
temperatures is explained briefly based on Christensen’s model of viscoelastic crack kinetics [10]. Second, many CFRTP
strands combined with T300–3000 and thermoplastic epoxy resin as the specimens for the longitudinal direction of
unidirectional CFRTP are prepared using simultaneous molding to elicit stable and uniform mechanical and thermal
properties. Third, the static strengths of unidirectional CFRTP are experimentally and statistically measured at various
temperatures using these CFRTP strands. Then the creep failure time of unidirectional CFRTP is predicted statistically using

M. Nakada (*) • Y. Morisawa • Y. Miyano


Materials System Research Laboratory, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, 3-1 Yatsukaho, Hakusan, Ishikawa 924-0838, Japan
e-mail: nakada@neptune.kanazawa-it.ac.jp

# The Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. 2018 19


A. Arzoumanidis et al. (eds.), Challenges in Mechanics of Time Dependent Materials, Volume 2,
Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63393-0_4
20 M. Nakada et al.

the statistical static strengths at various temperatures based on the predicting method. Finally, the creep failure times of
unidirectional CFRTP at a constant load and a temperature are measured experimentally and probabilistically using these
CFRTP strands for comparison with the predicted ones.

4.2 Statistical Prediction of Creep Failure Time of Unidirectional CFRTP

We have proposed the formulation for the statistical static strength σ s of CFRTP based on the viscoelasticity of matrix resin,
as shown in the following equation in our previous paper [7] as
 ∗ 
1 D ðt; T Þ
logσ s ðPf ; t; T Þ ¼ logσ 0 ðt0 ; T 0 Þ þ log½ ln ð1  Pf Þ  nR log , ð4:1Þ
αs Dc ðt0 ; T 0 Þ

where Pf signifies the failure probability, t denotes the failure time, t0 represents the reference time, T is the temperature, T0
stands for the reference temperature, σ 0 and αs respectively denote the scale parameter and the shape parameter on Weibull
distribution of static strength, nR is the viscoelastic parameter, and Dc and D* respectively represent the creep and
viscoelastic compliances of matrix resin. The viscoelastic compliance D* for the static load with a constant strain rate is
shown by the following equation.

D∗ ðt; T Þ ¼ Dc ðt=2; T Þ ð4:2Þ

The statistical static strength σ s is shown by the following equation by substituting Eq. (4.2) into Eq. (4.1).
 
1 Dc ðt=2; T Þ
logσ s ðPf ; t; T Þ ¼ logσ 0 ðt0 ; T 0 Þ þ log½ ln ð1  Pf Þ  nR log ð4:3Þ
αs Dc ðt0 ; T 0 Þ

The creep strength is obtainable by horizontally shifting the static strength by the amount log A. Therefore, the statistical
creep strength σ c is shown by the following equation.
 
1 Dc ðAt=2; T Þ
logσ s ðPf ; t; T Þ ¼ logσ 0 ðt0 ; T 0 Þ þ log½ ln ð1  Pf Þ  nR log ð4:4Þ
αs Dc ðt0 ; T 0 Þ

The failure probability of unidirectional CFRTP under a constant creep stress σ c0 can be shown by the following equation
from Eq. (4.4).
   
σ c0 Dc ðAt=2; T 0 Þ
Pf ¼ 1  expðFÞ, logF ¼ αs log þ αs nR log ð4:5Þ
σ0 Dc ðt0 ; T 0 Þ

The shifting amount log A determined by the slope kR of the logarismic static strength against the logarismic failure time
is shown by the following equation.

logA ¼ logð1 þ 1=kR Þ ð4:6Þ

The slope kR is obtainable from the following equation [10].

k R ¼ nR m R ð4:7Þ

The parameter mR is the slope of the logarismic creep compliance of matrix resin against the logarismic loading time.
4 Statistical Life Time Prediction Under Tension Loading for Unidirectional CFRP with Thermoplastics as Matrices 21

Table 4.1 Composition and cure schedule of CFRTP strand T300/thermoplastic epoxy resin
Carbon fiber strand Composition of resin (weight ratio) Cure schedule
T300–3000 Thermoplastic epoxy resin: (100) 100  C  0.5 h
Cure accelerator: (6.5)

Fig. 4.1 Dimensionless creep


compliance of matrix resin at
T ¼ 85  C

4.3 Molding of CFRTP Strands

A CFRTP strand which consists of high strength type carbon fiber T300–3000 (Toray Industries Inc.) and a thermoplastic
epoxy resin was molded by pultrusion method. The composition of thermoplastic epoxy resin and the cure condition of
CFRTP strand are presented in Table 4.1. The diameter and the gage length of CFRTP strands are approximately 1 mm and
200 mm, respectively. The glass transition temperatures Tg of the thermoplastic epoxy resin in CFRTP strand was 102  C
determined from the peak of loss tangent against temperature at 1 Hz using the DMA.

4.4 Creep Compliance of Matrix Resin and Static Strength of CFRTP Strands

The dimensionless creep compliance Dc/Dc0 for thermoplastic epoxy (TP-EP) measured at various temperatures is shown on
the left of Fig .4.1. The long-term Dc/Dc0 at T ¼ 85  C is obtained by shifting horizontally those at various temperatures, as
shown in the right of Fig. 4.1. In the right of Fig. 4.1, the long-term Dc/Dc0 for thermosetting epoxy (TS-EP) at T ¼ 120  C is
shown by gray symbols [9]. The time dependence of Dc/Dc0 is quite different with each other.
The static tension tests for CFRTP strand were conducted at three temperature levels, 25, 80, and 90  C with cross-head
speed 2 mm/min. The tensile strength of the CFRTP strand σ s is obtained using the following equation.

Pmax
σs ¼ ρ ð4:8Þ
te

Therein, Pmax is the maximum load [N]. ρ and te are the density of the carbon fiber [kg/m3] and the tex of the carbon fiber
strand [g/1000 m].
Figure 4.2 shows the Weibull distributions of the static strength of CFRTP strand (T300/TP-EP). αs is the shape parameter
and βs is the scale parameter of CFRTP strand in this figure. Although the scale parameter decreases according to the
temperature raise, the shape parameter maintains almost a constant value for CFRTP strands. σ 0 and αs in Eqs. (4.3), (4.4)
and (4.5) were determined as shown on Table 4.2. In this figure, the Weibull distributions of the static strength of CFRP
strand (T300/TS-EP) are also shown by gray symbols [9]. The temperature dependence and scatter for static strength of
T300/TS-EP are smaller than those for T300/TP-EP.
22 M. Nakada et al.

Fig. 4.2 Weibull


distributions of static tensile
strength of CFRTP strand

Table 4.2 Parameters for statistical creep failure time prediction for CFRTP strand
T300/TP-EP T300/TS-EP
Scale parameter of static strength of CFRP strand at 23  C: σ0 [MPa] 3482 3727
Shape parameter of static strength of CFRP strand: αs 22 38
Viscoelastic parameter of matrix resin: nR 0.30 0.05
Slope of viscoelastic compliance of matrix resin: mR 0.67 0.28
Slope of static strength of CFRP strand against failure time: kR 0.201 0.014
Logarithmic time shifting factor: logA 0.77 1.86

Fig. 4.3 Statistical static strength against viscoelastic compliance of matrix resin. (a) T300/TP-EP. (b) T300/TS-EP [9]

Figure 4.3 presents the dimensionless static strength σ s/σ 0 against the dimensionless viscoelastic compliance of matrix
resin D*/Dc0 for CFRTP strand (T300/TP-ES) and CFRP strand (T300/TS-ES) [9]. The relation of σ s/σ 0 against D*/Dc0 can
be shown by the straight line with the slope of nR which is the viscoelastic parameter in Eqs. (4.3), (4.4) and (4.5). The slope
of nR for T300/TP-EP is larger than that for T300/TS-EP. nR is shown on Table 4.2.
4 Statistical Life Time Prediction Under Tension Loading for Unidirectional CFRP with Thermoplastics as Matrices 23

Fig. 4.4 Failure probability against creep failure time. (a) T300/TP-EP. (b) T300/TS-EP [9]

4.5 Creep Failure Time of CFRTP Strands

Creep failure tests of CFRTP strands (T300/TP-EP) were conducted using the specially designed creep failure testing
machine [9]. The applied creep stress σc0 was 2263 MPa (65% of scale parameter of static strength at 23  C). Test
temperature was 85  C. Number of specimens was 15. Results of the creep failure tests are presented in Fig. 4.4a. The
predicted creep failure probability against failure time calculated by substituting the parameters on Table 4.2 in Eqs. (4.5),
(4.6), and (4.7) is also shown in Fig. 4.4a. The predicted statistical creep failure time agrees with the experimental data. The
creep failure test results and predicted creep failure probability for CFRP strands (T300/TS-EP) are shown in Fig. 4.4b
[9]. Although the same carbon fibers are used for both strand specimens, the creep failure time region and time dependence
for failure probability for T300/TP-EP are quite different with those for T300/TS-EP. Our proposed method can predict the
creep failure bahevior for both strand specimens.

4.6 Conclusion

The prediction method for statistical creep failure time under tension loading along the longitudinal direction of unidirec-
tional CFRP using the statistical static tensile strength of unidirectional CFRP and the viscoelasticity of matrix resin based
on Christensen’s model for viscoelastic crack kinetics were applied to the case of unidirectional CFRTP with a thermoplastic
epoxy resin as the matrix. We employed two kinds of resin impregnated carbon fiber strand with same carbon fibers and
different matrices. One is the T300/TS-EP with thermosetting epoxy, the other is the T300/TP-EP with thermoplastic epoxy.
Although the same carbon fibers are used for both specimens, the creep failure time region and time dependence of failure
probability are quite different with each other. Our proposed method can predict the creep failure bahevior for both
materials.

Acknowledgments This research was promoted by COI program “Construction of next-generation infrastructure using innovative materials
~Realization of a safe and secure society that can coexist with the Earth for centuries ~ supported by MEXT and JST.

References

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2. Sullivan, J.: Creep and physical aging of composites. Compos. Sci. Technol. 39, 207–232 (1990)
3. Gates, T.: Experimental characterization of nonlinear, rate dependent behavior in advanced polymer matrix composites. Exp. Mech. 32, 68–73
(1992)
4. Miyano, Y., Nakada, M., McMurray, M.K., Muki, R.: Prediction of flexural fatigue strength of CFRP composites under arbitrary frequency,
stress ratio and temperature. J. Compos. Mater. 31, 619–638 (1997)
5. Kawai, M., Yagihashi, Y., Hoshi, H., Iwahori, Y.: Anisomorphic constant fatigue life diagrams for quasi-isotropic woven fabric carbon/epoxy
laminates under different hygro-thermal environments. Adv. Compos. Mater. 22, 79–98 (2013)
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6. Miyano, Y., Nakada, M., Cai, H.: Formulation of long-term creep and fatigue strengths of polymer composites based on accelerated testing
methodology. J. Compos. Mater. 42, 1897–1919 (2008)
7. Nakada, M., Miyano, Y.: Advanced accelerated testing methodology for long-term life prediction of CFRP laminates. J. Compos. Mater. 49,
163–175 (2015)
8. Miyano, Y., Nakada, M., Kudoh, H., Muki, R.: Prediction of tensile fatigue life under temperature environment for unidirectional CFRP. Adv.
Compos. Mater. 8, 235–246 (1999)
9. Nakada, M., Miyano, Y.: Statistical creep failure time of unidirectional CFRP. Exp. Mech. 56, 653–658 (2016)
10. Christensen, R., Miyano, Y.: Stress intensity controlled kinetic crack growth and stress history dependent life prediction with statistical
variability. Int. J. Fracture. 137, 77–87 (2006)
Chapter 5
Time and Temperature Dependence on Tensile Strength
of Unidirectional CFRP with Various Carbon Fibers

Yasushi Miyano, Yoshiki Kobayashi, and Masayuki Nakada

Abstract The method of predicting the statistical creep failure time under the tension loading along the longitudinal
direction of unidirectional CFRP from the statistical static strengths of this CFRP measured at various temperatures is
applied to various unidirectional CFRP with different kinds of carbon fibers. Two kinds of CFRP strands with two kinds of
PAN based carbon fibers as specimens for unidirectional CFRP are prepared. The static strengths of these CFRP strands are
experimentally and statistically measured at various temperatures. Then the creep failure times of these CFRP strands are
predicted statistically using the statistical static strengths based on the predicting method. Finally, the creep failure times of
these CFRP strands at a constant load and a temperature are measured experimentally and probabilistically using these
CFRP strands for comparison with the predicted ones. Additionally, the predicting method is also applied to two kinds of
CFRP strands with two kinds of pitch based carbon fibers.

Keywords Carbon fiber reinforced plastics • Creep failure time • Statistical life time • Prediction • Viscoelasticity

5.1 Introduction

Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) have been used for the primary structures of airplanes, ships, automobiles and other
vehicles for which high reliability must be maintained during long-term operation. Therefore, an accelerated testing
methodology is strongly anticipated for the long-term life prediction of CFRP structures exposed to actual environmental
temperatures, water, and other influences.
The mechanical behavior of matrix resin of CFRP exhibits time and temperature dependence, called viscoelastic
behavior, not only above the glass transition temperature Tg, but also below Tg. Consequently, it can be presumed that the
mechanical behavior of CFRP depends strongly on time and temperature [1–5]. Our earlier reports have proposed the
formulation of statistical static, creep, and fatigue strengths of CFRP based on the viscoelasticity of matrix resin [6–7].
The tensile strength along the longitudinal direction of unidirectional CFRP constitutes important data for the reliable
design of CFRP structures. The authors developed a test method for creep and fatigue strengths as well as the static strength
at elevated temperatures for resin-impregnated carbon fiber strands (CFRP strands) combined with T300–3000 and epoxy
resin [8]. Furthermore, the authors have confirmed that the time and temperature dependent tensile static strength is
controlled by the viscoelastic behavior of matrix resin based on the Rosen’s shear lag model [9]. Additionally, the authors
developed a test method for the CFRP strand of T800–12000 and epoxy resin with highly reliable co-cured tab. The
temperature-dependent tensile strength of this CFRP strand was evaluated successfully [10].
Our most recent study undertook the prediction of statistical creep failure time under tension loading along the
longitudinal direction of unidirectional CFRP performed using CFRP strands of T300–3000 and epoxy resin [11]. The
statistical creep failure time of CFRP strands at a constant load and temperature was predicted using statistical results of
static tensile strengths of CFRP strands measured at various temperatures and the viscoelastic behavior of matrix resin. The
predicted results statistically agreed well with the experimentally obtained results measured using creep tests for CFRP
strands.
In this study, the proposed method of predicting the statistical creep failure time under the tension loading along the
longitudinal direction of unidirectional CFRP from the statistical static strengths of unidirectional CFRP measured at various
temperatures is applied to various unidirectional CFRP with different kinds of carbon fibers. First, the method of predicting
the statistical creep failure time of CFRP from the statistical static strengths of CFRP measured at various temperatures is

Y. Miyano (*) • Y. Kobayashi • M. Nakada


Materials System Research Laboratory, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, 3-1 Yatsukaho, Hakusan, Ishikawa 924-0838, Japan
e-mail: ymiyano@muc.biglobe.ne.jp

# The Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. 2018 25


A. Arzoumanidis et al. (eds.), Challenges in Mechanics of Time Dependent Materials, Volume 2,
Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63393-0_5
Another random document with
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“We got her back to bed, and when we were alone she said to me:
‘Flora, I must tell you something. I can tell you now, for I am going to
die, and God has forgiven me! I could not give life to any other soul,
Flora, and I could not die knowing that my sins would be visited on a
poor little baby! No, no—I could not bear that.
“‘They told me, the doctor told me at the hospital—or I dreamed it, on
that terrible night of the operation’, she said. ‘Flora, did you know
that I thought I had a child that night? No, or they told me I did——’
she said, beginning to be frightened again.
“‘Don’t bother your head about it now, Cecily,’ I said. ‘Just get well,
so that when Roger comes back——’
“She shuddered at Roger’s name, and began to get excited.
“‘I will be dead before that, and God will have forgiven me, Flora,’
she said. ‘Ah, you don’t think I was a sinner, but I was! Before I ever
took my marriage vow, I had taken another, when I was only fourteen
years old! Another girl and I at the convent had taken a solemn oath
to God that we would never marry!’”
“Poor child!” breathed Gabrielle’s pale lips, involuntarily.
“Poor child,” Flora echoed, without opening her eyes. Her voice was
so weak that David held water to her mouth, and she drank with
difficulty. “Poor little Cecily! She said that when she had first come to
Wastewater she had no thought of lovers or love in her mind. That
she had been bewildered and astonished at the emotion Roger had
almost at once roused in her, but that she had never thought of it as
love. That all her thoughts and senses had been in a wild confusion,
culminating on the day that he and she drove in to Minford, beyond
Tinsalls, quite simply, and that Roger, who knew the Justice there,
got a special license and they were married.
“That night she went quite simply away from her mother’s room,
expecting to be questioned in the morning. But her mother did not
miss her; Cecily was quietly dressing when her mother awakened
the next day. She said she remembered her vow that day. And when
she came to this part, I thought she was going to die. She said quite
seriously that she had had not one single happy moment since, and I
suppose when Roger laughed at her scruples—as he did laugh—he
broke her heart.
“I told her that no minor child could take a valid vow of that sort, and
that indeed her very marriage might be questioned, since her age
had been given as nineteen. No use! She believed me only enough
to say that no irregularity in her license could possibly make her child
more accursed than she would feel a child of hers to be.
“‘But I understand now—I never had a child—it’s Lily’s child!’ she
said, over and over again, with so much deep thankfulness that I
could only be thankful, too. ‘Lily told me all about it,’ she said, so
humbly and tenderly, ‘and she is no worse a sinner than I—less,
perhaps, for she loved and I did not!’
“I dismissed the nurse that afternoon, as it chanced, and sent for a
nurse we had had from Crowchester, Hannah Rosecrans, a fine girl.
She came the next day, and I told her, naturally, the whole truth, but
that both my poor Lily and Mrs. Fleming must be treated with the
utmost consideration until Mr. Fleming came home.
“Cecily was now all anxiety to get back to Wastewater. She said that
she never wanted to see again the cruel old doctor who had
frightened her so. I explained the situation to him, and presently we
all came back to Wastewater, leaving Carrie behind us simply
because she did not want to come.
“Hannah Rosecrans was engaged to be married, she was with us
only a few weeks, and then went to Australia, where her husband
has become well-to-do. She idolized the baby, and loved Lily, too,
but I suppose, servant-fashion, she gave the other servants to
believe that there was something amiss. Anyway, it was always ‘Miss
Lily’s baby,’ from the very first. Lily had told Margret about her
troubles months before, and I was never in any doubt what Margret
thought.
“As for Cecily, she seemed to think it settled. Our Crowchester
doctor was recalled, but there was nothing he could do except keep
her quiet. She was sinking very fast; she died when Gabrielle was
only seven or eight weeks old.
“Roger got home too late—the day before the funeral—but even then
I thought that any accident might show him the truth. I told myself
that in all this confusion it would only sadden him more. I—I don’t
know now what I thought, or why I did what I did! But Lily and the
baby and Margret had their own suite of rooms, and Roger naturally
paid little attention to them—in his grief for his wife. He saw the baby,
took it for granted she was Lily’s. And I told myself that sometime I
would of course tell him the whole story, or somebody would. He
would meet the old doctor who had attended Cecily, or the doctor
who had attended Lily, in Boston. Or he might run across Carrie, or
Hannah Rosecrans——
“Cecily was buried here where we buried Lily only last spring. Roger
went off on his searches, came home—gray-headed and so
changed!—went off again. And I never told him.
“I had begun it to protect Cecily, to comfort Lily—I never had planned
it; it all seemed to come about of itself, and for the first six years of
her life Gabrielle called Lily ‘Mamma.’ Then Lily became very bad,
and we put her in a sanitarium, and she never knew. And then Will
Fleming, my husband, died, and I thought——
“Fool that I was,” Flora added, after a pause, with infinite fatigue and
a sort of self-contempt in her voice, “I cared for Roger even then—I
cared for him even then. I was widowed, and he twice a widower. He
loved my child, but he loved Gabrielle as well. I could not—I could
not put Cecily Fleming’s child ahead of mine. Roger needed me, he
turned to me for everything. I could not see his little girl—placed
ahead of me—pushing me out of his life——
“I couldn’t!” she said more loudly, choking. “I had given my life to him
—my whole life! He had trampled me under his feet. Gabrielle was
fair—she was like Cecily’s mother—she was a beautiful baby. I knew
he would give his whole heart to her, live for her——
“One day he said that he was going to change his will, make a
generous provision for Lily’s poor little girl, and I was glad. It wasn’t
money that mattered—to me. I would have starved for him. He said
that in case his boy never came back, the little girls should share and
share alike, like sisters, and I was glad. There was never any plan in
what I did—I used to think that any hour might change it, any chance
word! I knew that Roger had written a will in Janet’s day, when Tom
was a baby, and when he might have had half-a-dozen other
children, but after this talk he had a good many interviews with his
lawyer, and I supposed that he had done what he said.
“He was not here very much; I came to believe that he hated the old
place, and me, and Lily, and everything that reminded him that he
had once been young and free with the world at his feet. I used to
think that even if he had found Tom, he would have gone on
wandering. But at last, when he came home, it was to die. He died—
you remember, David, quite quietly and without pain, one summer
day—he had been warned of his heart. He was packing to go off to
Panama, a doctor there had written that there was a young fellow
just answering Tom’s description—with—with whatever it is when a
man loses all memory—amnesia——
“A few days later we read the will. You remember, David, on such a
hot morning, in the library? Sylvia and Gabrielle were playing outside
on the terrace where the hydrangeas are; old Judge Baron had
come down from the city.
“We read the will, and I knew then what I had done. Gabrielle was
not mentioned. Gabrielle was not mentioned! The will stood as it had
stood when he wrote it, when Tom was a baby. Everything,
everything to his child, or children. And there was a codicil, dated
about the time of his last return home, giving everything, everything,
to Sylvia, in case Tom did not come back!
“My God, my God——” Flora whispered, under her breath, and lay
still.
“I had wanted it all my life, and now I had it,” she said, after a while,
in a voice that was weakening, weakening from moment to moment,
and yet full of passion and fire still. “I had it all. Judge Baron went
away, David went away, I was alone with Sylvia and little Gabrielle,
and Wastewater was mine. I remember, in the first long warm
afternoon, that I walked slowly through it, from room to room, and
thought that I had survived them all—Uncle Tom, Roger, Janet,
Cecily, Will—all, all the Black Flemings gone except me! I had only to
keep silent, and my child would be rich.
“I think that’s all,” she added, opening her sunken dark eyes and
fixing them steadily upon David’s face. “That explains it all, doesn’t
it? I have lived in fear. I knew the old doctor was dead, but I used to
lie in the nights imagining that he had happened to tell someone—
someone who was drawing nearer and nearer to my life every
moment. Hannah Rosecrans, the Carrie we had in Boston, the
doctor Lily had, whose very name I can’t remember—they all knew!
Any day might have brought them back to me with their questions.
“I used to imagine that I might go to jail! But I never was anything
else but in jail all my life long!”
CHAPTER XIX
She stopped. And after a long minute of silence the young persons
looked at each other. Tom had been sitting throughout in a low chair
with his hands locked; now he merely grinned nervously and
shrugged. David’s face was stern and grave; he had folded his arms
and had been staring ahead of him with a faint frown. Now his eyes
moved about the circle and returned to space. Sylvia’s vivid dark
face with its white, white skin was drained of colour, her eyes looked
tortured, and she was breathing fast. As she knelt beside the bed,
she half supported her mother upon her arm, her anxious and
stricken face close to the leaden, ghastly face upon the pillow.
Gabrielle had been kneeling, too, as she listened. But at the end she
rose and walked to the little window.
Outside, in the winter dusk, lay the soaked, blackened ruins of the
old stables, those clean big airy stables that Gabrielle had so loved
as a little girl. Nearer, against the angle of the house, lay the wreck
of the windmill, the great rusty hoops and singed wood piled almost
as high as the window. Beyond all were the bare winter woods,
looking desolate and forlorn in the cool gray light, and on the right
brimmed and lowered the steely surface of a cold and unfriendly sea.
As Gabrielle stood there, her weary heart and mind whirled hither
and thither by a hundred conflicting thoughts, in a very storm of pity
and pain, the island lights suddenly pricked through the dove-gray of
the gloom and flashed their pinkish radiance against the gaining and
prevailing shadows. The girl’s thoughts travelled to them idly—she
thought of little ships cutting their way through the trackless waters,
and dark-faced, rough men twisting the spokes of the little wheels
and peering out across the waves to find that steadily pulsating flash.
Somebody had lighted a light in the room behind her; she saw her
own reflection, slender, aureoled, against the dark night. David
touched her arm.
A sudden bitter need of tears possessed her, and her breast swelled.
But she only raised heavy eyes to his questioningly, and bit her lip to
steady it.
“Aunt Flora wants to speak to you, Gay.” The girl could tell by David’s
tone that he had said it before. He gently turned her toward the bed.
She looked bewilderedly at Tom, who was busy at the lamp, and at
Sylvia, who stood at the foot of the bed. Like a person in a dream
she went slowly toward Flora, and knelt down beside her.
Flora reached out hard and anxious fingers and gripped the girl’s
hand.
“I told David this yesterday—he told you and Tom—he was to tell you
—when the fire came——” Flora whispered.
“He did tell us.” Gabrielle’s beautiful voice sounded childish and
husky in contrast to the other weak voice. “But I thought—I thought
that—my mother—Lily was still my mother, and that Uncle Roger
was my father—that I had no right to call him father. It seems”—her
lips shook again—“it seems that I might have had—a father——” she
faltered. Her voice thickened and stopped. She raised her eyes
appealingly, almost apologetically to David, who was watching
closely. “I never—had—any one,” she said, with suddenly brimming
eyes.
Flora spoke, and immediately afterward, in a strange muse that was
not hearing, Gabrielle heard Sylvia give a sort of cry, and then David
leaned over her and said tenderly:
“Gay—she is very ill, dear. If you can——?”
“If I can—what—David?” she repeated, confused, her beautiful eyes
wide and anxious.
“She wants you to forgive her, Gabrielle,” David answered.
Gabrielle still appeared bewildered; she looked from one face to
another.
“Yes, I will, of course I will,” she said, quickly and simply.
“Then tell her so, Gabrielle.”
Gabrielle bent her gaze upon her aunt’s sunken face, a blot against
the white pillows, and Flora fixed upon her the tragic look of her
darkening eyes.
“I am sorry, Aunt Flora,” Gabrielle stammered, in tears. “I know—I
know how hard it must have been for you. I am so sorry.”
“You will forgive me, Gabrielle?” Flora whispered, feverishly. “In all
the years to come you will not hate me? You have grown to be a
lovely woman—I did not harm you. I might have harmed you—but it
was Sylvia, in the end, who paid for what I did.”
“I will never hate you,” Gabrielle said, slowly and steadily, like a child
repeating a lesson.
“It was because I loved him so,” said Flora’s drawn, dark mouth, in a
whisper. She sank back, seemed to be sinking away from earth and
the things of earth altogether. “God bless you, Gabrielle, you have
made it easy for me to die,” she added, in the mere breath of a
voice.
“I’m—so—sorry!” Gay said, with a great sob. And she buried her
face against the coverlet and burst into crying. “I’m so sorry that he
was unkind to you—and that you could not forgive him and forgive
me!” she sobbed. “We might have been—we might all have been so
happy!”
“We might have been so happy,” Flora’s lips repeated. No other
muscle of her bloodless face and shut eyes moved. “God bless you,
Gabrielle,” she whispered again, as Gabrielle, drawn away by
David’s hand, stopped to lay a wet cheek against hers and kiss her
in farewell.
The girl, halfway to the door, and hardly conscious of what she was
doing, suddenly wrenched herself free and went back to the bed.
She fell on her knees, and catching the languid dark hand, put it to
her lips.
“Aunt Flora, indeed I forgive you!” she said, weeping, “from my heart.
I am so sorry you were so unhappy—that they all hurt you and failed
you so! Dear Aunt Flora——”
Sylvia was on her knees on the other side, and crying as bitterly as
Gabrielle, when David led the younger girl away. He and Margret
established her upon a downstairs sofa, with cushions and covers
before the fire, and she lay there in a dreamy state, not talking,
hardly thinking, as the strange panorama of the last twenty-four
hours wheeled through her weary head. She saw Flora only once
again, and that was at the end, at seven o’clock.
At ten Tom drove them to Crowchester and they boarded the Boston
train; Sylvia veiled and clinging tightly to Tom’s arm, Gabrielle and
old Margret guiding them through the interested, warm train to the
privacy of their drawing room.
Gabrielle’s last look at Wastewater had shown her only bare trees,
blackened masses of ruins darker than the prevailing dark, open
levels where the stately walls had been. A cold moon had been
shining brightly upon the sea, had thrown the shadows of leafless
bushes in a lacework across the bare brown space of the lawn, and
against the steady rush and retreat of the short waves she had heard
the tumbling cascading sound of some bit of wall collapsing upon the
general collapse. Toward the distant west wall, beyond the woods,
the changed perspective had left a long vista free, and Gabrielle
could see the white gravestones in the moonlight.
Graves and ruins, ashes and bare branches, and beside them the
unchanged, restless sea, and above them the unfeeling moonlight.
The child of Wastewater looked back with a great gravity, a great
solemnity in her heart. There had been laughter here, music and
voices. Wastewater had had a housewarming, more than a hundred
years before, when beautiful women, in the capes and high-waisted
gowns of the Empire days, had been driven in jingling great coaches
all the way from Boston City to dance and rejoice with the young
master of the mansion.
There had been a first Roger, in the buff and blue of the Revolution,
Colonel Fleming, as black and as handsome as any of them, and
there had been his son Tom, the good-hearted Tom who had come
all the way to Brookline to find a cousin’s disconsolate little widow,
with her sewing machine, and her girl babies, and offer them a
home.
And there had been Tom’s son Roger, handsomest and most
dashing of them all—David’s young mother, who was to win his
heart, and that shadowy little Cecily, who must now be “mother” in
Gabrielle’s thoughts.
Aunt Flora always watching jealously; Aunt Lily tearful and singing
her romantic little songs; gallant little Tom reading his sea stories on
the old nursery window-sill; dark little proud Sylvia with her glossy
curls; baby Gay herself, wistful and alone; they all seemed to pass
before the girl’s eyes in a long and haunting procession, crying as
they went that they had always failed, even here, in all this wealth
and beauty, to find happiness and peace!
“I will be happy,” Gabrielle had sworn to herself solemnly, frightened
at the history of the place. “I will try never to be proud or jealous or
cruel. We are Flemings, we four—and I as much a Fleming as any
one of them now, and we must not make their mistakes! God helping
us,” she thought, remembering the little nun who had years ago read
the Sermon on the Mount to a class of inattentive little girls so many
times, “we will all be good, and meek, and merciful, and some day—
years and years from now—we will come back to Wastewater again
and rebuild it.
“Good-bye, Wastewater!” she had whispered, leaning back to look
through the glass window of the motor car. And from beyond the
ruins, the ashes, the bare garden, and the moonlit sea, the island
lights had flashed her an answer.
CHAPTER XX
It was more than a long year later that David Fleming, driving the
car that Sylvia had ordered with such happy confidence before that
long-awaited twenty-first birthday, left Crowchester, and followed the
familiar road along the cliffs.
The spring was early, and the sweetness of it was already in the air;
there were patches of emerald grass in sheltered places, and all the
rich warm milky odours of turned earth and fruit blossoms, new
leaves and the first hardy lilacs. Babies in sheltered coaches were
airing along the little streets of Keyport, and if the restless little
breezes and the sunless shadows were chilly, in the sunlight there
was a delicious warmth.
The familiar dips and turns of the road were all like so many
welcoming faces to David, and when he reached the boundaries of
Wastewater he might almost have fancied, for a moment, that the old
order of things had remained unchanged, that back of that barrier of
great trees, now trembling into tiny dots of palest green, he might
indeed find the grim dark building, the shuttered windows, the dank
unhealthy shrubs and paths that had been the first home of his
recollection.
The brick walls and the iron gates, more deeply bedded than ever in
fallen leaves and mould, were unchanged, but the road between
them, so many years unused, had been somewhat cut by wheels,
and had been churned into mud. It stood open, but David left his car
outside, got out and turned his back to the land for a moment,
standing staring out to sea, as he had done upon that autumn day
more than two years ago, that dreary, dark October day when
Gabrielle had first come home.
He remembered, as his eyes idly followed the scrambling path down
between the rocks and the bare mallow bushes to the shore, the
muggy smells that had always assaulted his nostrils when the big
side door of Wastewater had been opened, the smell of distant soup
bones, dust, horsehair furniture, decaying wood, stifling coal fires
that smoked. He remembered his aunt, rigid and stern, before the
fire, her apprehensive, nervous eyes always moving behind him
when he entered the room, and searching there for some menace
always feared and never realized. He remembered the lamps, the
antimacassars, the booming voices of the maids in the gloomy halls.
And then Gabrielle, in her velvet gown, with her big, starry eyes.
Gabrielle, so young and so alone, met by such staggering blows,
such bitter truths. Gabrielle watching Sylvia’s youth and happy
fortune so wistfully, bearing her own sorrows and burdens with her
own inimitable childish courage and dignity.
What a time—what a time! the man mused, his breast rising on a
great sigh, as he shook his head slowly. Sylvia’s majority, and then
Tom’s return, Aunt Flora’s stupefying revelation as to Gay’s
parentage, and then the last scene—or almost the last—when he
had gone upstairs to tell them—Gabrielle and Tom, that they were
brother and sister, and the great wind and the fire had trapped them
there.
So that had been the end of Wastewater, with these four young
persons, all Flemings, flying for their lives through the night, and
Aunt Flora, who had spent all her life there, killed by the falling of all
her moral and material walls in one terrible crash. She had lain for
almost twenty-four hours in John’s dismantled house, without pain of
body, and in a lulled state even of mind, but she had been dying
none the less. David had reviewed a hundred times the dark and
forbidding afternoon, the ugly red of the sunset, as it shone upon the
walls, and the memory of Aunt Flora’s sunken face against the
pillows, the memory of her monotonous, weary voice.
The last of her generation, that stormy and ill-governed generation
whose passions and weaknesses had filled the whole house with
tragedies for so many years, she had died very quietly, quite as if
going to sleep, before the ashes of the old place had been cold.
Sylvia, beautiful, twenty-one, her own life as truly in ruins and ashes
about her, had been kneeling beside her mother at the end, the
doctor standing gravely near, and David himself watching them all
with that strange quality of responsibility that seemed to be his
destiny where each and every one of them was concerned.
Afterward, Tom had taken the girls in to Boston, where Sylvia, ill from
shock and sorrow, had been left in the care of Gabrielle and a nurse,
while Tom and David came back to Wastewater for the funeral.
David, reaching this point, turned back and looked across the old
garden, to find the glint of headstones far up the northwest corner of
the estate, beyond the woods, and under a fountain of delicate blue-
green willow-whips.
Much of the garden was left after only one season’s neglect, he
mused, and could be reclaimed. There were healthy-looking roses,
and the splendid hedge of lilacs was already bursting from hard
brown buds into white and lavender plumes. The conifers looked
clean and fresh in their new tips, even the maples and elms were
magnificent as ever.
An odd new look of something like pioneer roughness had been
given the place, however, by the raw wood-piles. Gay’s one
stipulation, David smiled to remember, in one of the few allusions
she had made to the subject, had been in reference to the heavy
evergreen shrubbery close to the house. Mightn’t—she had put it so,
although all this land was hers now—mightn’t a lot of those ugly old
pines and cypresses come down?
Down they had accordingly come, to be chopped and piled into
substantial stacks against some coming winter. Also stacked and
piled were the bricks that had been Wastewater, the thousands and
hundreds of thousands of bricks, that had been scraped and aligned
into long solid blocks.
Some day, David mused, there would be a home here again. But
when, the young persons most concerned had not yet definitely
stated. He sighed as he thought of them, and smiled above the sigh.
A start had been made, at least. There was a handsome building
already standing; a long low barn of friendly warm clinkered brick,
with the wide new doors of a garage at one end, and at the other,
across an arch, beyond which cows and horses might be fenced
some day, was a homely, comfortable cottage, of the type that faces
a thousand English lanes, steep roof cut by white-curtained dormers,
latticed deep windows against which vines were already trained, and
a hooded doorway with a brass knocker.
An Airedale, whirling about the corner of the building with a wild
flourish, leaped upon David in welcome, and immediately curled
himself rapturously in the short film of the grass, with all four feet in
the air, writhing in puppy ecstasies.
“Here, here, Ben!” David said, laughing. “Grow up! It’s ridiculous to
see a dog of your age acting that way!”
But he was rubbing and tousling the rough head affectionately, none
the less, as he called, “Etta! John!”
In answer Etta, John’s wife, appeared with an undisturbed smile. For
the months of building last fall, and again this spring, Mr. David had
been living in his little Keyport farmhouse and might be expected
here at almost any minute to inspect and approve. Etta herself had
watched so much of the re-building with secret contempt. It seemed
odd, when one could afford a nice square plastered house, and a
corrugated iron barn, to waste twice as much money on what John
considered “monkey shines.” But Miss Gabrielle and Miss Sylvia and
Mr. Tom had all been away for more than a year now, in California
and Mexico and Panama, and now it was Central America, and dear
knows what it’d be next, and consequently Mr. David and his friend
Mr. Rucker had had it all their own way.
Etta had no objection to Mr. Rucker, who was always so kind and
polite, and funny, too, if you always understood just what he meant,
but she could not understand why he should drag in talk about
Swedish farmhouses and Oxford.
“I don’t know anything about Oxford,” Etta had more than once
commented to her husband, “but I do know that the Swedes all get
here as fast as they can, and why any one’d want to bring their
clumsy-looking old barns after them beats me! Mr. Rucker was
showing me the pitchers in a book; ‘It looks like something a child
would make with blocks, if you’d ask me!’ I told him.”
“I hope when they build a house it’s going to look decent,” John
might answer, uneasily. “I don’t know what better they’d want than
three stories with plenty of bay windows and porches. I seen one
pitcher Mr. David had in a book with all the roofs kinder sloping down
into the garden, and the windows all different sizes and levels. Mr.
Rucker says he has some old leaded windows from a bar-room—
that’s what he said—for the liberry. I had Davis, over to the Lumber
Company, send him a catalogue, and mark all the new doors and
windows with a blue pencil, but I don’t know if he got it.”
To-day David gave Etta an opportunity for criticism when he said
cheerfully, as she somewhat reluctantly accompanied him about the
place:
“How’s the house, Etta—comfortable?”
“Oh, we’re quite comfortable, thank you,” Etta answered, primly, in a
faintly complaining tone, “and John’s got the Eyetalians engaged to
start the side garden anyway before the folks get back. But here’s
the thing that I’ll never get through my head,” Etta added, with the
readiness of an already well-aired grievance, as she looked up at the
wide archway and its casement windows above; “it don’t seem
sensible to have that arch, or gate, or whatever you call it, making
the barn and the house into one. As far as needing the room goes,
we’ll never need it, for John would no more think of going through
that way for the hay than flying over the moon. I was thinking it would
look handsomer to have the barn separate—and while the men are
right here, and before Miss Gabrielle gets home to look at the plans
for a house, and dear knows when that will be now!—why, they could
tear out that arch real easy, and smooth the brick up so that it’d
never show—and it does seem as if it’d be more Christian—more
like the way other places look—places like the Smiths’, over to
Tinsalls, that have millions of dollars, but their house looks so neat
and square——”
“Ah, they’ve got the stable foundations started,” David said, in
satisfaction, paying no attention to Etta’s remarks.
“Oh, yes, sir, they got the cement in day before yesterday,” Etta,
diverted, answered, in the same placid whine.
“That’s fine,” David said, nodding to the various workmen as he
walked about. “Room for four cows and about that many horses, and
some day we’ll put a chicken run on that end.”
“Do they say when they’ll be coming back, sir?” Etta asked.
“Any time this summer, I suppose,” David said. “Mr. Tom is quite
himself again—too well, in fact, Miss Sylvia wrote. I think she and
Miss Gabrielle would have been glad to come straight home from
San Francisco, but Mr. Tom saw the masts of ships again, and that
was enough. He wired they wanted me to go around the world with
them, but eventually they seemed to have compromised on Panama.
I’ve not had letters yet, but in a telegram a few days ago—I told you
that?—there was some talk of Central America.”
“Dear me,” said Etta, who always made this remark in any pause,
“haven’t there been changes? That grand old house—John says it’d
cost a million dollars to rebuild it now—it does seem such a pity it
had to burn down!”
“The insurance,” David said, consolingly, “will more than build a
much prettier and more homelike Wastewater.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Etta said, with the relished pessimism of an old
servant. “I was wondering if Mr. Rucker had seen them pretty
plastered houses over to the Crowchester Manor Estates?” she
asked, adroitly.
David did not answer. He looked at the mud-spattered and torn blue-
print that was anchored from the coquettish spring breezes upon a
plank with two brick-bats, murmured to the contractor, suggested,
approved.
It was easy for his thoughts to find Gabrielle at Wastewater, for they
were almost all of her in these days, and it was here that she had
spent her life, except her school years. David had no recollection of
her in any other setting. To-day, as always, she seemed to be beside
him, walking through the strangely altered spring garden, talking with
him of the changes to be.
She had borne herself, he had thought, with his affectionate quiet
pride in her carrying as ever an undercurrent of pain—she had borne
herself in the trying time of readjustments and changes better than
all of them. There was a native dignity, a fineness about her, that
made it possible for her apparently to forget herself entirely.
As he remembered her, in the few weeks that had intervened
between her departure with Tom and Sylvia for the West, in old
Margret’s care, it was difficult to recall any special demonstration of
her own feelings at all. Sylvia had been actually if not seriously ill,
Tom had suffered a dangerous relapse after the strain and exposure
of the night, but Gay had been just her usual self. David had had a
thousand cares: first to establish them temporarily in a comfortable
hotel, then to commence the endless business of placing Gabrielle in
her rightful position, with all it involved in the matter of taxes,
transfers, legal delays of every sort.
He had written to the far-away Hannah Rosecrans in Australia, and
had had a prompt and satisfactory reply. Hannah was Mrs. Tarwood,
now, with children of her own. She gladly and unsuspiciously
supplied a hundred details: the Fleming baby’s first nurse’s name at
the big hospital, the name of a young doctor who had more than
once come to see little Gabrielle in her first delicate weeks of life.
Through these and Flora’s other clues David established the matter
legally beyond all doubt, and Tom simplified the question of property
division by being eager to reserve about only one fifth of his father’s
estate for himself, giving his half-sister everything else. Wastewater,
the jewels, this piece of property, that other, this stock and those
bonds, everything, in short, about which division might have
presented the slightest difficulty, Tom would have impatiently
discarded in her favour. He was going to die anyway, he would
remind them.
Beyond all this, David had Sylvia’s inheritance to handle. Flora had
left a will, but it was superseded by an urgent note to her daughter,
written at the time when Sylvia was supposed heiress to the whole
Fleming fortune, begging her to make over her own money to
Gabrielle.
Sylvia, hysterical and sensitive and unreasonable, had still persisted
that this must be done; Gay—she protested in floods of shamed
tears—had been wronged long enough! No, it must be all, all Gay’s,
and she, Sylvia, would go forth into the world penniless, and make
her own way—she would be happier so.
It had been Gay, patient and serious, in her new black, who had
talked her into a healthier frame of mind. Gay had sat beside her
cousin’s bed, smiling, talking occasionally, interesting Sylvia in the
various phases of the business as they had come up, had managed
both invalids and the whole comfortable suite, and had joined David,
to affix a signature or witness a deed, as quietly as if this earthquake
had touched her personally not at all.
Most admirable, he thought, had been her attitude with Tom. From
the strange, disorganized winter day of Aunt Flora’s death, Gay had
been quite simply, affectionately, and appreciatively Tom’s little sister.
There had been no scenes, no hysteria, no superfluous words; David
did not even suppose that the sister and brother had discussed the
subject. Immediately, and with a youthful and almost childish grace
that David, remembering, would recall with suddenly blinking eyes,
she had adopted big, clumsy, unpolished Tom. In three days, quite
without awkwardness, if with a sometimes slightly heightened colour,
he had heard her speak of “my brother” to doctors, nurses, waiters in
the hotel.
She had carried Tom, he realized now, by storm, by the sheer force
of her own extraordinary personality. If Tom had ever been in any
doubt as to the fashion of recommencing their friendship along these
wholly altered lines, Gabrielle had instantly dispelled it.
More, she had given Tom as a brother ten times the visible affection
and confidence that she had been willing to give him in any other
relationship. Gabrielle had been afraid to be too friendly before. Now
she was free to laugh with him, to spoil him, to tease him, to sit on
the edge of his bed and hold his big, hard hand while she recounted
to him her daily adventures.
And Tom had proved quite unconsciously, by his pathetically eager
and proud acceptance of this new state of affairs, that it was her
companionship, her sympathy he had wanted. He had wanted to be
a little needed, a little admired, to be of some consequence to David,
to the admirable Sylvia, and lastly, to inconsiderable and neglected
little Gabrielle.
He had seized upon his half-brotherhood with her as he had never
developed exactly the same relationship with David. Indeed, so
consummately wise had been this child’s—for David thought of her
as scarcely more than a child—this child’s handling of the situation,
that within a week of the change Tom’s tone had actually taken on
the half-proud, half-chiding note of an adoring elder brother, and
David had seen in his eyes the pleased recognition of the fact that at
least no one else was, or could be, Gabrielle’s “family” but himself.
Tom’s condition appearing to be supremely unsatisfactory, there had
immediately been talk of southern California or Florida for the winter.
For Sylvia, who was strangely shaken, quiet, and unlike herself even
when physically well again, it seemed a wise solution, too. Gabrielle
was of course to accompany her brother, and David must follow as
soon as all their complicated affairs permitted.
Saying good-bye to the little black-clad group, when he had escorted
them as far as Chicago, David had returned somewhat sadly to his
duties as doubly, trebly an executor, his canvases, and the lonely
painting of the first snows. And after that the months had somehow
slipped by in a very chain of delays and complications: upon the only
occasion when David had actually been packed and ready to start
for the West, a telegram from his closest friend, Jim Rucker, or rather
from Jim’s wife, in Canada, relative to an accident, illness, and the
need of his help, had taken him far up into the Winnipeg woods
instead.
Had the three Flemings been in La Crescenta, high and dry above
ocean and the valleys of southern California, where they had at first
quite established themselves, with a piano and a garden and a
telephone, David might have joined them during the second summer.
But by this time Tom was entirely well again, perfectly able to live in
the East, winter and summer if he liked, “but catch me doing it,”
wrote Tom, in his large sprawling hand, and the travellers had gone
into Mexico.
“Do for Heaven’s sake be careful, Gay,” David had written anxiously.
“You appear to be the brains of the expedition. You may get into hot
water down there!”
“Sylvia, on the contrary, is the brains of the expedition, as you so
elegantly phrase it,” Gabrielle had answered, cheerfully, “and as to
getting into trouble—no such luck!”
Then they were in San Francisco again, and David, with a muffled
hammering going on steadily in his heart when he thought of seeing
Gay again, had been expectant of a wire saying that any day might
find them turning eastward. But no, for Tom had caught sight of all
the huddled masts in the San Francisco harbour, the mysterious
thrilling hulls that say “Marseilles” and “Sydney” and “Rio de
Janeiro,” and he had been all for Australia—all for South America—
had compromised finally upon Panama.
That was two months ago. Now, perhaps still feeling that the late
New England spring would be chilly, they were apparently off for
Guatemala and Honduras.
David could school his heart the better to patience because he had
no hope. No hope even in her obscure little friendless days really of
winning Gabrielle, and less hope now. His attitude toward all women,
as he himself sometimes vaguely sensed, was one of an awed
simplicity; they seemed miraculous to David, they interested him
strangely and deeply, as beings whose lightest word had a
mysterious significance.
If he had once loved Sylvia dearly, loyally, admiringly—and he knew
that for almost all her life he had—then what he felt toward Gabrielle
was entirely different. There was no peace in it, no sanity, no
pleasure. It burned, an uncomfortable and incessant pain, behind
every other thought; it penetrated into every tiniest event and act of
his life.
The mail to David, nowadays, meant either nothing or everything.
Usually it was nothing. Once a month perhaps it glowed and

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