Linear elastic failure

Fracture Mechanics. Linear elastic fracture mechanics (qv) (LEFM) can be appHed only to the propagation and fracture stages of fatigue failure. LEFM is based on a definition of the stress close to a crack tip in terms of a stress intensification factor K, for which the simplest general relationship is... 

Substantial work on the appHcation of fracture mechanics techniques to plastics has occurred siace the 1970s (215—222). This is based on earlier work on inorganic glasses, which showed that failure stress is proportional to the square root of the energy required to create the new surfaces as a crack grows and iaversely with the square root of the crack size (223). For the use of linear elastic fracture mechanics ia plastics, certaia assumptioas must be met (224) (/) the material is linearly elastic (2) the flaws within the material are sharp and (J) plane strain conditions apply ia the crack froat regioa. 

The tensile strength of a unidirectional lamina loaded ia the fiber direction can be estimated from the properties of the fiber and matrix for a special set of circumstances. If all of the fibers have the same tensile strength and the composite is linear elastic until failure of the fibers, then the strength of the composite is given by... 

The simplified failure envelopes differ little from the concept of yield surfaces in the theory of plasticity. Both the failure envelopes (or surfaces) and the yield surfaces (or envelopes) represent the end of linear elastic behavior under a multiaxial stress state. The limits of linear elastic... 

Finally, if the usual restriction to linear elastic behavior to failure is made. 

The analysis of stresses in the laminae of a laminate is a straight-fonvard, but sometimes tedious, task. The reader is presumed to be familiar with the basic lamination principles that were discussed earlier in this chapter. There, the stresses were seen to be a linear function of the applied loads if the laminae exhibit linear elastic behavior. Thus, a single stress analysis suffices to determine the stress field that causes failure of an individual lamina. That is, if all laminae stresses are known, then the stresses in each lamina can be compared with the lamina failure criterion and uniformly scaled upward to determine the load at which failure occurs. 

Note that the lamina failure criterion was not mentioned explicitly in the discussion of Figure 4-36. The entire procedure for strength analysis is independent of the actual lamina failure criterion, but the results of the procedure, the maximum loads and deformations, do depend on the specific lamina failure criterion. Also, the load-deformation behavior is piecewise linear because of the restriction to linear elastic behavior of each lamina. The laminate behavior would be piecewise nonlinear if the laminae behaved in a nonlinear elastic manner. At any rate, the overall behavior of the laminate is nonlinear if one or more laminae fail prior to gross failure of the laminate. In Section 2.9, the Tsai-Hill lamina failure criterion was determined to be the best practical representation of failure... 

Linear elastic behavior to failure occurs for individual laminae. 

The term fracture toughness or toughness with a symbol, R or Gc, used throughout this chapter refers to the work dissipated in creating new fracture surfaces of a unit nominal cross-sectional area, or the critical potential energy release rate, of a composite specimen with a unit kJ/m. Fracture toughness is also often measured in terms of the critical stress intensity factor, with a unit MPay/m, based on linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) principle. The various micro-failure mechanisms that make up the total specific work of fracture or fracture toughness are discussed in this section. 

As previously noted, this chapter has been concerned mainly with those models for the creep of ceramic matrix composite materials which feature some novelty that cannot be represented simply by taking models for the linear elastic properties of a composite and, through transformation, turning the model into a linear viscoelastic one. If this were done, the coverage of models would be much more comprehensive since elastic models for composites abound. Instead, it was decided to concentrate mainly on phenomena which cannot be treated in this manner. However, it was necessary to introduce a few models for materials with linear matrices which could have been developed by the transformation route. Otherwise, the discussion of some novel aspects such as fiber brittle failure or the comparison of non-linear materials with linear ones would have been incomprehensible. To summarize those models which could have been introduced by the transformation route, it can be stated that the inverse of the composite linear elastic modulus can be used to represent a linear steady-state creep coefficient when the kinematics are switched from strain to strain rate in the relevant model. 

A brittle behavior. The force-displacement (F-d) curves are linear elastic. The crack propagates in an unstable way. The damage mechanisms have not been initiated before failure. The fracture surfaces are very smooth and mirror-like. At the microscopic scale, they are believed to be associated with the development of a single crack. 

Linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) approach can be used to characterize the fracture behavior of random fiber composites. The methods of LEFM should be used with utmost care for obtaining meaningful fracture parameters. The analysis of load displacement records as recommended in method ASTM E 399-71 may be subject to some errors caused by the massive debonding that occurs prior to catastrophic failure of these composites. By using the R-curve concept, the fracture behavior of these materials can be more accurately characterized. The K-equa-tions developed for isotropic materials can be used to calculate stress intensity factor for these materials. 

The correlation is quite good for the SRI500 resin, while for the more ductile adhesive resin the predictions overestimate the measured failure loads. However, in the latter case an extensive damage zone develops before final failure and the non-linear elastic fracture model is no longer appropriate. It is interesting to note however, that when a fillet is left at the end of the overlap the test values are much closer to the predictions. 

The thickness of the TDCB specimens (S = 10 mm) is sufficient to ensure plain strain conditions. It should be noted that during the test the arms remain within their elastic limit. Therefore, from simple beam theory [7], and by the use of linear elastic fracture mechanics, the strain energy release rate of the adhesive can be obtained using Eqn. 2, where P is the load at failure and E, is the substrate modulus. The calculated adhesive fracture energy was employed in the simulation of the TDCB and impact wedge-peel (IWP) tests. 

At low densities of fibres, fracture proceeds by brittle failure or debonding of the fibres a fully linear elastic loading curve is observed (type I loading curve in Table II). 

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