MATE1000 Lecture 15 Fracture and Failure

(Callister Chapter 8, pages 184 to 204; Chapter 17, pages 538 to 546.)

Fracture
When a metal or alloy is stressed it has 2 options to deform or to fracture. Fracture is the
separation of a stressed component into two or more pieces, via the growth of a crack in
response to an applied stress. There are two extremes ductile fracture (on the right below)
and brittle fracture (on the left below).

A ductile fracture is preceded by extensive plastic deformation. This means that at the tip
of an advancing, potentially harmful crack the material can deform, blunt the crack tip, lower
the local stresses promoting crack growth and absorb the energy normally required to grow
the crack. Considerable energy is required to fracture a ductile material. Metals, alloys and
many polymers are ductile. However, note that the ductility of these materials decreases as
the temperature is lowered or the strain rate is increased.
Brittle materials fail with little or no prior plastic deformation. This means that the
fracture can be sudden, unexpected and often catastrophic. It requires relatively little energy
to fracture a brittle material. Ceramics and glasses are brittle.
Brittle fracture is the result of rapid growth of pre-existing cracks or flaws in the material.
Whether a pre-existing crack is stable or can grow rapidly under an applied stress depends
on three main factors:
a) the applied stress (),
b) the crack size (a), and
c) the energy (Gc) required to produce unit area of crack (ie the energy needed to grow
the crack). Note that Gc is a material property the strain energy release rate (units
Jm-2) and is called the toughness of the material.

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A crack of size a will grow if the
strain energy released is greater than
the energy required to create more
crack.
Consider the case of a sheet of
material of thickness t subjected to a
stress and containing a crack of
length a.
The crack will become unstable and
grow (ie. the material will fail), if the
strain energy released when the crack
grows an amount a - (2/E)ata
is greater than the energy required to
grow the crack - Gcta.
This condition can be expressed as:-
Gc = (2/E)a
or
(GcE) = (a)
In other words there is a critical
combination of applied stress ()
and crack size (a) at which
unstable, fast fracture occurs.

The term (GcE) is often replaced by Kc the fracture toughness of the material (units
MPam), so that the condition for fracture becomes: Kc = (a). Kc is a property of the
material and depends on the mode of crack opening Tension (mode I) KIC; Sliding or shear
(mode II) KIIC and Tearing (mode III) KIIIC.
Some indication of the critical crack size for brittle fracture in various materials is given
in the table below. Note the dependence of the critical crack size on the applied stress.

CRITICAL CRACK SIZES in VARIOUS MATERIALS

GC E KIC Crack Size (mm) at a Stress of:-
MATERIAL -2 1/2
KJm GPa MPam E/1000 1 GPa
Glass 0.01 70 0.84 0.045 0.0002
SiC 0.05 450 4.8 0.035 0.0072
Tough ZrO2 0.9 200 13.4 1.43 0.057
Cast Iron 1 200 14.1 1.59 0.064
H. S. Steel 20 200 63 31.8 1.27
Mild Steel 200 200 200 318 12.73
Copper 800 125 316 2037 31.8

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Preventing Brittle Fracture
An obvious method of avoiding brittle failure is to eliminate any cracks or flaws in the
material. Unfortunately this is seldom feasible, and even if it could be done, it is essential to
ensure that new cracks are not formed in service, by accident or from mistreatment. So
rather than attempting to reduce a on the right hand side of the equation Kc = (a) it is
usually better to increase the fracture toughness Kc by altering the microstructure of the
material or by making the growth of new and existing cracks more difficult.
If the microstructure of the material is such that it contains large, elongated, angular particles
that can act as incipient cracks, then heat treatment or other processing of the alloy can be
used to alter the size and shape of these particles. Changing the particles to a more rounded,
spherical shape and reducing their size will result in an increase in the fracture toughness
(Kc) of the material.
Two alternative approaches that involve making crack growth more difficult involve
composites and transformation toughening.

Composites
The principle behind the use of fibre-reinforced composites to improve fracture toughness
is simple. It is based on recognising that the fracture of brittle materials is related to the
growth of cracks, not just to the existence of cracks. If pre-existing cracks can be prevented
from growing to a critical size, the fracture toughness of the material can be improved.
Provided the fibres in a composite are
very thin, are aligned parallel to the
stress and are isolated from one
another by the matrix in between, then
any pre-existing cracks can only grow
to the width of the fibres. Hence, a
bundle of thin fibres should be
considerably tougher (higher Kc) than
a large block of the same material.
Similarly, if the matrix in between
the fibres is relatively narrow
comparable in size to the fibre
diameter then any cracks in the
matrix can be prevented from
growing.
This combination of fibres embedded
in a matrix is essential. The interface
between fibre and matrix provides a
means of restricting crack growth, the
matrix allows the load in any broken
fibres to be transferred to other fibres
(and vice versa) and the matrix helps
to protect the fibres from damage

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The fracture toughness of a fibre-reinforced composite can exceed the fracture toughness of
the two individual materials making up the composite. A common example is fibreglass.
The value of KIC for glass is ~0.75 MPam and KIC for epoxy resin is ~0.4 MPam - a pair
of very brittle materials! But when made into a composite fibreglass the value of KIC
for the composite is ~50 MPam - nearly 100 times greater than the fracture toughness of
the individual components!

Transformation Toughening
This is a very clever idea, first used in steels in the late sixties, and discovered in zirconia
ceramics in the seventies by CSIRO scientists in Melbourne.
The basic principle is as follows:
First, arrange for the material to have
particles or grains of a metastable phase
that can transform (via an instantaneous,
martensitic transformation) to its stable
state, under the actions of the stresses at the
front of a growing crack. Provided this
stress-induced transformation results in
an increase in volume and absorbs some of
the energy that would normally have gone
into growing the crack, the toughness of the
material increases transformation
toughening.
The transformed region in the wake of
the advancing crack can exert opposing
stresses that attempt to close the crack and
prevent it growing.
In zirconia ceramics, which are inherently
brittle KIC ~ 2MPam1/2 a metastable
tetragonal phase can be made to transform to monoclinic at the crack tip, with a
consequential volume increase of 4 to 5%. The resulting transformation toughening from the
stresses in the transformed wake is capable of increasing the toughness of the ceramic
by more than a factor of 6 from 2MPam1/2 to around 14MPam1/2 comparable with the
toughness of cast iron.
This opens up the possibility of engineering ceramics, which could replace metals in
certain applications. If it could be made to work, it would change the whole picture of
engineering materials. Ceramics are potentially much stronger than metals, but are no use in
structural applications, because of their abysmally low toughness.