Delamination Fracture Toughness of Graphite and Aramid Epoxy Composites

1986 ◽  
Vol 108 (4) ◽  
pp. 290-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Saghizadeh ◽  
C. K. H. Dharan

The delamination fracture toughness of graphite and aramid-epoxy composite laminates was determined as a function of loading rate for unidirectional and woven reinforcements. In addition, the in-situ fracture toughness of the epoxy matrix was obtained by determining the crack energy release rate during the delamination fracture of thin epoxy films. The fracture surfaces were investigated using scanning electron microscopy. The results show that increasing the loading rate and the use of woven reinforcements increase the fracture toughness. A model was used to estimate the relative contributions from the fiber-matrix interface and the matrix to the overall delamination crack energy release rate.

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (23) ◽  
pp. 1722-1733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masood Nikbakht ◽  
Hossein Hosseini Toudeshky ◽  
Bijan Mohammadi

Critical energy release rate for delamination initiation in composites as a material property, supposed to be independent from non-material variables. However, a thorough literature review presented in this study shows that in many cases it may vary with the variation of layup configuration or geometrical and dimensions. This study is aimed to investigate the effect of interface layers orientation on fracture toughness by eliminating the other influential parameters such as stacking sequence, by selecting the anti-symmetric layup configuration of Double Cantilever Beam, [Formula: see text], in which θ will be 0°, 30°, 45° and 60°. The energy release rates data have been calculated using different criteria and techniques to obtain the load and displacement at initial crack growth and the results were compared with the standard methods. The damage zone near the crack tip is also illustrated before and after the crack propagation by microscopic images of delamination front, and discussed for all investigated interface fiber angles. Experimental results show that the effect of interface layers orientation on fracture toughness of the investigated layup configurations based on the nonlinear technique as a standard procedure is negligible while other techniques show a considerable changes in the calculated energy release rate with the increase of interface layers angle from zero to 60 degrees.


Author(s):  
Tairui Zhang ◽  
Weiqiang Wang ◽  
Aiju Li

In this study, we investigated the drawbacks of previous studies regarding the evaluation of fracture toughness from spherical indentation tests (SITs). This was achieved by an examination of the material damage mechanism during indentation tests, uniaxial tensile tests, and Mode I/II fracture tests. A new approach based on the energy release rate was proposed in this study to evaluate the fracture toughness of ductile metals. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations revealed that the mechanism for material damage during an indentation test was different with the material damage in uniaxial tensile tests and Mode I fracture tests, but similar to that in Mode II fracture tests. Thus, the energy release rate during SITs should be correlated with JIIC. Compared with previous studies, this new proposed method was more consistent with the actual damage mechanism and did not rely on the specific critical damage values. Experiments on SA508, SA533, 15CrMoR, and S30408 revealed that the maximum error from this energy release rate-based approach was no more than 13% when compared with their conventional counterparts (compact tension tests), and thus can meet the precision requirement of engineering applications.


2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Moy ◽  
Jerome Tzeng

Abstract Fracture toughness properties of composite laminates were evaluated at a loading rate commonly observed in ordinance applications. The laminates are composed of IM7 graphite and a small volume fraction of S2 glass plies to form a cross-ply laminate. Fracture toughness appears to be very rate sensitive if the crack growth perpendicular to the plane dominated by glass/matrix property. Experimental data shows a 30–40% increase of fracture toughness for various layup as the loading rate was increase by 1000 times. The specimens examined under microscopic indicates the strengthening might due to different failure mechanism in the matrix. In addition, there is no visible rate effect if the crack propagation is perpendicular to the graphite dominant plane.


2014 ◽  
Vol 81 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Theocharis Baxevanis ◽  
Chad M. Landis ◽  
Dimitris C. Lagoudas

A finite element analysis of steady-state crack growth in pseudoelastic shape memory alloys under the assumption of adiabatic conditions is carried out for plane strain, mode I loading. The crack is assumed to propagate at a critical level of the crack-tip energy release rate and the fracture toughness is obtained as the ratio of the far-field applied energy release rate to the crack-tip critical value. Results related to the influence of latent heat on the near-tip stress field and fracture toughness are presented for a range of parameters related to thermomechanical coupling. The levels of fracture toughness enhancement, associated with the energy dissipated by the transformed material in the wake of the growing crack, are found to be lower under adiabatic conditions than under isothermal conditions [Baxevanis et al., 2014, J. Appl. Mech., 81, 041005]. Given that in real applications of shape memory alloy (SMA) components the processes are usually not adiabatic, which is the case with the lowest energy dissipation during a cyclic loading–unloading process (hysteresis), it is expected that the actual level of transformation toughening would be higher than the one corresponding to the adiabatic case.


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