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Proceedings of the ASME 2014 33rd International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering
OMAE2014
June 8-13, 2014, San Francisco, California, USA
OMAE2014-24692
DRAFT: FATIGUE PRECRACKING METHODOLOGY FOR HDPE
Thais Pereira de Sequeira
Departamento de Engenharia Metalrgica
e de Materiais
Marysilvia Ferreira da Costa
Programa de Engenharia Metalrgica
e de Materiais
Celio Albano da Costa Neto
Programa de Engenharia Metalrgica
e de Materiais
Laboratrio de Processamento e Caracterizao de
Materiais (LPCM) - PEMM/COPPE/UFRJ,
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ,
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 21941-972, Brazil
ABSTRACT
With the discovery of new reservoirs of petroleum and gas
in ultra high deep-water, the offshore exploration conditions
have been turned tougher. Structural polymers applied in these
conditions may resist through offshore/subsea exigencies. As an
example, we can apply High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) as a
thermoplastic jacket in subsea umbilicals which the existence of
cracks can impair its performance. However, the long-term
behavior of this material is not well established and it is not
known how your fracture behavior and fatigue crack opening
and growth are. This knowledge is quite important because it
enables to determine safer conditions of operation. Therefore,
the crack opening and growth of HDPE will be evaluated using
auxiliary tests as Tension Tests and Dynamical-Mechanical
Analysis (DMA) to find auxiliary mechanical parameters.
Finally, it will be formulated a crack opening and growth
methodology and then calculate KIC value of HDPE respecting
the Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics.
1 INTRODUCTION
Fracture mechanics has been used to evaluate the
presence of cracks or flaw in structural applications. Metals, for
instance, dates from de 40s with linear elastic fracture
mechanics (LEFM) [1] and 60s with elastic-plastic fracture
mechanics (EPFM) [1,2]. Both methodologies require the
presence of a very sharp crack, namely, the radius of curvature
at the crack tip must be zero (or very close to it). In metals, the
sharp crack is easily obtained via fatigue pre-cracking and,
additionally, standards controlling the parameters are well
established. Polymers, on the other hand, are viscoelastic
materials and pre-cracking by fatigue has not been an easy
process. For instance, Parsons et al. [3] and Vlad et al [4]
opened with razor blade, a typical procedure found in the
literature.
Chan and Williams [5] reported that razor blade does
not simulate an ideal crack plane and the sharpest tip;
furthermore, the blade can cause damage to the polymeric
matrix and it may interfere with the fracture test result. At this
moment, to compare fracture mechanics parameters using a
razor blade with fatigue pre-cracking does not seen
appropriated because a paper comparing both pre-cracking
techniques for the same material was not found
The use of polymers for structural applications has
been increasing and the petroleum and gas industry is no
exception. For ultra-high deep-waters exploration where scCO2
may be present and cause damage to the material, life prediction
will be even more necessary and fracture mechanics may be a
powerful tool for this work.
Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to
evaluate the fatigue pre-crack opening conditions that lead to an
acceptable crack, as those preconized in metals standard, with
focus in a zero radius of curvature at its tip. HDPE was chosen
because it is easily processed; plenty of references and it is used
for jacket of subsea umbilicals and flexible risers.
2 EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
The material investigated was a high density poly-
ethylene (HDPE). It was selected because of its process
2 Copyright 2014 by ASME
simplicity, low cost, ease of obtainment and has use in P&G
industry.
The specimens for tensile and fracture toughness tests
were produced according to ASTM D 638 and ASTM D5045,
respectively. The tensile sample was type I, with a gage length
of 57.0 +/- 0.5 mm. The fracture mechanics specimens were a
CT type, 25.5 mm thick, with dimensions shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Dimensions of Compact Tension (CT) specimen
in mm, as ASTM D5045.
The pre-cracking is the first and essential step to
conduct fracture toughness tests and, as will be demonstrated
below, to fatigue near the glass transition temperature (Tg)
resulted in controllable fatigue crack growth process. It was
then necessary to determine the Tg of the HDPE. DMA tests
(Netsch, model TA800), using a three point bend fixture and
specimen size of 60 x 12 x 3 mm, were conducted and the Tg
was obtained as function of frequency and temperature. Firstly,
the frequency was fixed at 1, 3 and 5 Hz and the temperature
continuously increased from -150 to 100
o
C. Secondly, the
temperature was fixed at -70, -20, 0 and 23
o
C and the frequency
varied from 1 to 100 Hz, at each temperature.
Tension tests were conducted in a Instron machine
(model 5582R), load cell of 10 kN, optical extensometer, at
room temperature and cross head speed of 50 mm/min. The
tests were conducted according to ASTM D638. The yield
strain, yield stress and Young Modulus were obtained; and they
were used to calculate the fracture mechanics parameters.
Before the fatigue pre-crack tests, monotonic tensile
tests was executed in notched CT samples (ASTM D5045). It
was conducted to guarantee that maximum fatigue force would
never surpass the tearing resistance of the sample. The fatigue
pre-crack test loads were far below the maximum load
supported by the sample, avoiding plasticity at the notch/crack
tip.
The fatigue pre-crack condition was implemented as
close as possible of the linear region of the material (HDPE),
determined by the DMA tests above. The procedure was as
follows.
The fatigue pre-crack was opened in a servo-hydraulic
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