Fracture of Materials

Liberty Ship

Liberty Ship

Comet

Northridge earthquake

Fracture Mechanics
Fracture mechanics provides powerful
criteria for the prediction of crack
propagation.

Fracture Mechanics
Linear elastic fracture mechanics theory
was developed in 1920.
Fracture mechanics was used successfully
in design for metallic and brittle materials
early on; however comparatively few
applications were found for concrete.

Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics

Griffith is often regarded as the founder of fracture
mechanics.
He observed experimentally that small imperfections have
a much less damaging effect on the material properties
than the large imperfections.
Griffith suggested an energy balance approach based not
only on the potential energy of the external loads and on
the stored elastic strain energy but also on another energy
term: the surface energy. 16

Crack in a plate

Crack in a plate
Griffith used a result obtained by Inglis17
that the change in strain energy due to an
elliptical crack in an uniformly stressed
plate is a 2 2 E and therefore the change in
potential energy of the external load is twice
as much .

The change of energy of the plate

due to the introduction of the crack
is given by:

U cracked Uuncracked =

2 a2 2
E

a2 2
E

+ 4 a

Crack in a plate
Minimizing the energy in relation to the
crack length,
a 2 2

+ 4 a = 0

E
a

gives the critical stress (for plane stress):

2 E
a

Importance of the equation

This equation is significant because it
relates the size of the imperfection (2a) to
the tensile strength of the material.
It predicts that small imperfections are less
damaging than large imperfections, as
observed experimentally.

Critical energy release rate

Irwin proposed that instead of using the
thermodynamic surface energy, one should
measure the characteristic surface energy of a
material in a fracture test.
He introduced the quantity Gc as the work
required to produce a unit increase in crack area.
Gc is also referred to as the critical energy
release rate.
Gc is determined experimentally, normally using
simple specimen configuration.
18

Critical energy release rate

The energy release per unit increase crack area, G,
is computed; if the energy release rate is lower
than the critical energy release rate (G < Gc ) the
crack is stable.
Conversely, if G> Gc, the crack propagates.
In the case when the energy release rate is equal to
the critical energy release rate (G=Gc), a
metastable equilibrium is obtained.

Example

Modes
Mode I: opening or tensile mode,
Mode II: sliding or in-plane shear mode
Mode III: tearing or antiplane shear mode.

Modes

Stresses at the tip of the crack for

mode I
y =

x =

3
cos 1 + sin sin

2r
2
2
2
KI

cos 1 sin sin

2
2r
2
2
KI

3
xy =
sin cos cos

2 r
2
2
2
KI

Impressed??
Hope so but no
Need to memorize

Stress-intensity factor
KI is called stress-intensity factor for
Mode I.
Dimensional analysis of indicates that the
stress-intensity factor must be linearly
related to stress and to the square root of a
characteristic length.
Assuming that this characteristic length is
associated with the crack length:

K I = a f (g )

Fracture toughness
Suppose we measure the value of the stress
at fracture in a given test.
Using the previous equations, we determine
the critical stress intensity factor, Kc, or
fracture toughness as it is usually called in
the literature. .

Example
A ceramic has a strength of 300 MPa and a
fracture toughness of 3.6 MPam0.5.
What is the largest-size internal crack that
this material can support without fracturing?

K IC = a
a=

K IC

= 4.58 x 10 m
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