Material properties fracture resistance

The magnitude and nature of the load are considered in formulating the design. The load may be essentially quasistatic, cycHc, or impact. Many stmctural failures, for example, have been caused by supposedly innocuous stmctural details welded in place without any consideration given to their effect on fatigue properties. The service temperatures are also important, since they affect the fracture resistance of a material. 

Given the existence of interphases and the multiplicity of components and reactions that interact to form it, a predictive model for a priori prediction of composition, size, structure or behavior is not possible at this time except for the simplest of systems. An in-situ probe that can interogate the interphase and provide spatial chemical and morphological information does not exist. Interfacial static mechanical properties, fracture properties and environmental resistance have been shown to be grealy affected by the interphase. Careful analytical interfacial investigations will be required to quantify the interphase structure. With the proper amount of information, progress may be made to advance the ability to design composite materials in which the interphase can be considered as a material variable so that the proper relationship between composite components will be modified to include the interphase as well as the fiber and matrix (Fig. 26). 

Different parameters impose different requirements on ceramic materials depending on whether fracture resistance or crack propagation resistance is of prime importance. The values of the above parameters for a range of ceramic materials are presented in Table 15.1, where the property dependence of thermal shock behaviour can be observed. A variety of other parameters... 

Analysis of these effects is difficult and time consuming. Much recent work has utilized two-dimensional, finite-difference computer codes which require as input extensive material properties, e.g., yield and failure criteria, and constitutive laws. These codes solve the equations of motion for boundary conditions corresponding to given impact geometry and velocities. They have been widely and successfully used to predict the response of metals to high rate impact (2), but extension of this technique to polymeric materials has not been totally successful, partly because of the necessity to incorporate rate effects into the material properties. In this work we examined the strain rate and temperature sensitivity of the yield and fracture behavior of a series of rubber-modified acrylic materials. These materials have commercial and military importance for impact protection since as much as a twofold improvement in high rate impact resistance can be achieved with the proper rubber content. The objective of the study was to develop rate-sensitive yield and failure criteria in a form which could be incorporated into the computer codes. Other material properties (such as the influence of a hydrostatic pressure component on yield and failure and the relaxation spectra necessary to define viscoelastic wave propagation) are necssary before the material description is complete, but these areas will be left for later papers. 

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