Materials for Damage Tolerant Design

When a material may fail at a stress much below its strength? Why ceramics are not as popular as metals for structural design despite ceramics offer the best specific strength and specific modulus? Failure
Ductile Ductile failure initiates at yield strength and the material can fracture after an appreciable amount of plastic flow
Hatfield, England rail accident, Oct 17, 2000)

Brittle

In the presence of a crack, brittle failure can initiate much below the yield strength of the material leading to fast fracture

Almost every engineering design is required to be damage tolerant, however, some applications may require stringent materials selection to prevent failure. e.g. pressure vessels, aircraft, railroad components etc.

A material may be prone to failure if a crack or void is present on the surface or inside the bulk and this depends on some specific properties of the material

y =

1+2

c d
An edge crack under tensile loading

Crack geometry in a tensile element. The plot on the right shows the stress distribution around the crack tip for a particular case of geometry and loading.

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Stress field ahead of a crack tip for linearly elastic and isotropic materials x = y r x 2c b z xy = y = KI
cos 2 3 1 - sin sin 2 2

(2r)1/2 KI
cos

(2r)1/2 KI
cos

3 1 + sin sin 2 2

(2r)1/2 z = 0 (plane stress) yz = zx = 0 KI = lim (y (2r))

r, 0

3 sin cos 2 2

This equation is expressed in more convenient form (using the dimensional analysis) as,

[Where c is the half of the crack length in the bulk of the material, is the nominal stress and Y is a constant known as shape factor and it depends on the ratio c/b, increasing as the ratio increases]
(Ref: Page 324-326, N. E. Dowling , 3rd Edition)

KI = Y c

Toughness vs. Fracture toughness

Which material would you choose for making pole vault?
Bamboo Aluminium Steel GFRP/CFRP

5.96 m

5.97 m

CFRP

GFRP Bamboo, 1896 2008 Olympic record for pole vault 2012

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Toughness is the ability of a material to store energy before it fails completely,

Stress

or, it is the amount of energy released when the material is allowed to fully relax.

Strain

Toughness is different from resilience as the later is the amount of energy stored for the maximum elastic deformation

Measuring toughness
Total work done in peeling the tape = Strain energy release per unit area (Gc) x New surface area created

M.g.a = Gc.t.a Gc = M.g/t

Toughness is the amount of energy stored in a material up to the point of failure whereas fracture toughness is defined as the measure of materials resistance to crack propagation

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Energy approach to fracture toughness calculation

Fast fracture at fixed displacement: when a plate is clamped in tension so that the upper and lower ends are fixed Energy absorbed in

W Uel + Gc t c

making unit area of the crack

- Uel = Gc t c -Uel = Gc t c
Uel
Gc = surface energy

Change in elastic energy

= -

2 2E

c2t 2
This 2 can be neglected as the volume calculation for total strain was an underestimation.

This equation is valid only for a crack at the edge/surface

Gc = 2 c / 2E

KI = ( c)1/2 = (E Gc)1/2 KI = Y ( c)

Figure 4.2: An edge crack under tensile loading

Stress intensity factor

Y is a shape factor. We can take it as unity if the value of Y is not given in a design problem.

Fracture toughness is the critical stress intensity factor, KIC

Very brittle

Brittle

Ductile

GFRP

10-100

20-60

If glass fibre and most of the polymers have low Gc and Kc then why GFRPs have higher Gc and Kc compared to both glass fibre and plastics? The fracture toughness of polystyrene and Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) are about the same (1 MN m-3/2) but LDPE has very high resistance to crack growth while polystyrene is brittle. Explain why?

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Modes of fracture

Mode I

Mode II

Mode III

Mongolian tough horses

Mechanisms of material failure/fracture

Ductile tearing by plastic deformation is the primary mechanism of failure for ductile metals and polymers above the DBTT or glass transition temperature
Appearance of a ductile failure surface (Co-Fe-V alloy)

Necking

Ref: fig 8.35 from Mechanical Behavior of Materials by Dowling

Ductile drawing
Ref: fig 4.6 from Mechanical Behavior of Materials by Dowling Ref: fig 4.5 from Mechanical Behavior of Materials by Dowling

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Ductile polymers
Ref: fig 4.9& 4.10 from Mechanical Behavior of Materials by Dowling

Ductile metals

What are the factors that ductile behaviour depend upon?

Temperature Strain rate

Brittle fracture mechanism:

For a ductile material there will be appreciable plastic deformation at the crack tip which will stop further growth of the crack For brittle material there is no or very little plastic deformation at the crack tip and the failure takes place by the cleavage of the atomic planes.
Fig 14.3 from textbook

Fracture often starts at sharp corners of a material or at places where there is residual stress concentration such as welded joints

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Appearance of a brittle failure surface (Co-FeV alloy)

Smooth cleaved surface

Ref: fig 8.35 from Mechanical Behavior of Materials by Dowling

Intergranular brittle fracture (Source: Liam)

Atomistic aspect of brittle fracture: http://www.mrs.org/membership/preview/may2000bull/Gumbsch.pdf

Atomic planes

Transgranular brittle fracture: In this type of crack propagation the crack travels across different grains of the material. The crack may change direction as it enters a different grain because the crack propagates through a plane of least resistance.

Grains

Grain boundaries Intergranular brittle fracture: In this type of fracture cracks move along grain boundaries and not through any grain. For such materials grain boundaries tend to be weaker and hence requires least energy.
Hydrogen embrittlement renders steel weaker as hydrogen reacts with the iron carbide present at the grain boundaries to form methane gas

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Transgranular cleavage fracture (Ref. Practical failure analysis, Vol. 2(5), 2002 , page 37)

Intergranular brittle fracture (Source: Liam)

Embrittled cast steel pneumatic wrench (Ref. Practical failure analysis, Vol. 2(5), 2002 , page 37)

Failure mechanism for composites and natural fibers

For composites, fibres act as crack stopper. When a crack meets a fibre it starts running parallel to the fibre leading to some de-bonding between the fibre and the matrix. For rubber toughened polymers, the stress at the crack tip is used to deform rubber particles and thus further propagation of the crack is minimized.

Fig 14.4 and 14.5 from Ashby and Jones

Woods are stronger along the fibre length direction. For example it is easier to peel the fibres of a bamboo but it is very strong when pulled along its fibre length.

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