Abstract
The effect of gel on the fracture toughness of four PVC/NBR (50/50) blends was characterized by two different J- integral methods. Three of these blends are compatible blends with 33% acrylonitrile in NBRs, and the fourth with 21% acrylonitrile content, is an incompatible blend. Two types of gel are involved in this study microgels and macrogels. The J-integral methods are (1) conventional method proposed by Bagley and Landes and (2) crack initiation locus method proposed by Kim and Joe. The same load-displacement curves are used in both methods. However, the latter eliminates the energy dissipation away from the crack tip in the determination of Jc, while the former does not. Both methods produced almost the same results indicating that the energy dissipation away from the crack tip is negligible in these samples. The fracture toughness of a macrogel-containing blend is much greater than that of a microgel-containing blend, which, in turn, is only slightly greater than that of a gel-free blend. This implies that the two gel-containing blends have different fracture processes. The incompatible blend has the lowest fracture toughness due to weak interaction at the boundaries of the two phases.