15ME103 Materials Technology

Syllabus
UNIT III - FRACTURE BEHAVIOUR (9 hours)
Griffith's theory, stress intensity factor and
fracture toughness - Ductile to brittle transition –
High temperature fracture, modes of fracture, creep
- Deformation mechanism maps - Fatigue, Low and
high cycle fatigue test, crack initiation and
propagation mechanisms - Fracture of Non-metallic
materials. Failure analysis, Sources of failure,
procedure of failure analysis.

Mohammed Iqbal
Mohammed Iqbal
 Failure mechanisms
• It is important to know how materials fail
mechanically
 e.g. the “Liberty” ships mass produced to convey supplies to
Britain during WWII
 it turned out that in the low temperatures of a North Atlantic
winter steel became brittle (Constance Tipper, Cambridge
University, UK)

Mohammed Iqbal http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/125/noflash/1925-1950/images/tipper_libertybreak.jpg

 Fracture
Fracture is the separation of a specimen info two or
more parts by an applied stress.

Fracture takes place in two stages:

(i) initial formation of crack and
(ii) spreading of crack.
 Depend upon the type of materials, the applied
load, state of stress and temperature metals
have different types of fracture.
Types of fracture
 Brittle Fracture
 Ductile Fracture
 Fatigue Fracture
 Creep Fracture
Mohammed Iqbal
 Fracture
• Fracture is usually undesirable in engineering
applications.
• Flaws such as surface cracks lower the stress for
brittle fracture where as line defects are
responsible for initiating ductile fractures.
• Different types of fracture

Mohammed Iqbal
 Ductile Fracture
• Ductile fracture is defined as the fracture which
takes place by a slow propagation of crack with
considerable amount of plastic deformation.
There are three successive events involved in a ductile
fracture.
• The specimen begins necking and minute cavities
form in the necked region. This is the region in
which the plastic deformation is concentrated. It
indicates that the formation of cavities is closely
linked to plastic deformation.
• It has been observed that during the formation of
neck small micro cracks are formed at the centre of
the specimen due to the combination of
dislocations.
• Finally these cracks grow out ward to the surface of
the specimen in a direction 45° to the tensile axis
resulting in a cup-end-cone-type fracture
Mohammed Iqbal
 Ductile failure
rough surface from
plastic deformation

characteristic
cup-and-cone
shape of ductile
fracture
initial cavity cavity crack
necking formation coalescence propagation
(in shear)
Mohammed Iqbal http://web.umr.edu/~be120/lessons/intro/tension/testing_st/fracture.gif
 Ductile Fracture
• An important characteristic of ductile fracture is that it
occurs through a slow tearing of the metal with the
expenditure of considerable energy.
• The fracture of ductile materials can also explained in
terms of work-hardening coupled with crack-nucleation
and growth.
• The initial cavities are often observed to form at foreign
inclusions where gliding dislocations can pile up and
produce sufficient stress to form a void or micro-crack.
• Consider a specimen subjected to slow increasing
tensile load. When the elastic limit is exceeded, the
material beings to work harden.
• Increasing the load, increasing the permanent elongation
and simultaneously decrease the cross sectional area.
• The decrease in area leads to the formation of a neck in
the specimen, as illustrated earlier.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Ductile Fracture

a) crack nucleation at a slip-plane obstacle

b) Crack nucleation at low-angle grain boundaries
Mohammed Iqbal
 cup and cone fracture surface

Mohammed Iqbal
Mohammed Iqbal
 • This is the fracture surface
of steel, broken at room
temperature. The steel is a
normalized 0.3% carbon
steel and it was broken by a
high speed impact at about
20oC.
• The steel is ductile at this
temperature, and breaks by
a mechanism called
"microvoid coalescence".
The steel contains many
hard particles (precipitates
and inclusions). These do
not deform when the steel is
deformed, and voids are
produced around the hard
particles.

Mohammed Iqbal
• The voids grow and join together (coalescence),
eventually causing failure. You can see the
microvoids, and sometimes the nucleating
particle, on the fracture surface at high
magnification.
• The ductile fracture surface is rough and non-
reflective. Many metals fail by this mechanism,
including aluminium and copper alloys. The large
amount of deformation that is required for this
mechanism absorbs a lot of energy and the
toughness of the steel can be quite high.
• The ductile microvoid coalescence mechanism
becomes more difficult as the temperature
decreases, and brittle fracture by cleavage can
occur instead in steels at low temperatures.

Mohammed Iqbal
• You can reproduce the ductile fracture
mechanism by adding sand to clay or plasticine.
Vary the amount of sand and observe how
increasing the number of particles decreases the
toughness and ductility. The same behaviour is
seen in metals.
• The toughness of modern steels has been
improved by developments in steel making,
which have controlled the number and type of
particles in the steel.
• Large particles have a very bad effect on
toughness. Very small particles, however, can
sometimes be used to improve the strength of the
steel, without any significant effect on toughness.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Brittle Fracture
• Brittle fracture is the failure of a material with
minimum of plastic deformation. If the broken
pieces of a brittle fracture are fitted together,
the original shape & dimensions of the
specimen are restored.
• Brittle fracture is defined as fracture which
occurs at or below the elastic limit of a
material.
The brittle fracture increases with
• Increasing strain rate
• Decreasing temperature
• Stress concentration conditions produced by a
notch.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Salient Features of Brittle Fracture
• Brittle fracture occurs when a small crackle in materials grows. Growth
continues until fracture occurs.

• The atoms at the surfaces do not have as many neighbors as those in

the interior of a solid and therefore they form fever bonds. That implies,
surface atoms are at a higher energy than a plane of interior atom. As a
result of Brittle fracture destroying the inter atomic bonds by normal
stresses.

• In metals brittle fracture is characterized by rate of crack propagation

with minimum energy of absorption.

• In brittle fracture, adjacent parts of the metal are separated by stresses

normal to the fracture surface.
• Brittle fracture occurs along characteristics crystallographic planes
called as cleavage planes. The fracture is termed as cleavage fracture.
• Brittle fracture does not produce plastic deformation, so that it requires
Mohammed
less energyIqbal
than a ductile failure.
 Mechanism of Brittle Fracture
• The mechanism of Brittle fracture is explained by
Griffith theory.
• Griffith postulated that in a brittle material there
are always presence of micro cracks which act to
concentrated the stress at their tips.
• The crack could come from a number of source,
e.g. as a collection of dislocations, as flow
occurred during solidification or a surface
scratch.
• In order to explain the mechanism of ideal brittle
fracture, let us consider the stress distribution in
a specimen under constant velocity in the vicinity
of crack.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Griffith’s theory of brittle fracture
• Griffith proposed ideas that did have a great influence on
the thinking about the fracture of metals.
• He proposed that a brittle material contains a population of
fine cracks which produces a stress concentration of
sufficient magnitude so that the theoretical cohesive
strength is reached in localized regions at a nominal stress
which is below the theoretical value.
• When one crack starts spreads into a brittle fracture , it
produces an increase in the surface area of the sides of the
crack.
• This requires energy to overcome the cohesive force of the
atoms , or when expressed in another way , it requires an
increase in the surface energy.
• The source of the increased surface energy is the elastic
strain energy which is released as the crack spreads.

Mohammed Iqbal
• Griffith established the following
criterion for the propagation of a
crack.

• “A crack will propagate when the

decrease in elastic strain energy is at
least equal to the energy required to
create the new surface.”
• This criterion can be used to
determine the magnitude of the tensile
stress which will just cause a crack of
a certain size to propagate as a brittle
fracture.
• The elastic strain energy required per
unite of the plate thickness is equal to
:
• Ue=-((c^2)(^2))/E
• Where =Tensile stress acting normal to
the crack of length 2a
• A negative sign is used because growth of
the crack releases elastic strain energy.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Griffith theory of brittle fracture
 = 2E
e
Where,
• e is half of the crack length,
•  is the true surface energy
• E is the Young's modulus.
• the stress is inversely proportional to the square root of the
crack length. Hence the tensile strength of a completely
brittle material is determined by the length of the largest
crack existing before loading.
• For ductile materials there is always some plastic
deformation before fracture. This involves an additional
energy term p. Therefore the fracture strength is given by
1
 =  2E  2

 
 e 
Mohammed Iqbal
• The stress required to create the new crack
surface is given as follows :

In plane strain condition, the equation becomes

Mohammed Iqbal
 Modified Griffith equation
• The Griffith equation is strongly dependent on the crack size a,
and satisfies only ideally brittle materials like glass.
• However, metals are not ideally brittle and normally fail with
certain amounts of plastic deformation, the fracture stress is
increased due to blunting of the crack tip.
• Irwin and Orowan suggested Griffith’s equation can be applied
to brittle materials undergone plastic deformation before
fracture by including the plastic work, γp, into the total elastic
surface energy required to extend the crack wall, giving the
modified Griffith’s equation as follows :

Mohammed Iqbal
 Brittle fracture
• Brittle fracture takes place with little prior
deformation
 and the surfaces tend to be flatter and perpendicular to the
stress

 Typically crack propagation is by successive breaking of

bonds along a particular crystalline direction – cleavage
 in a polycrystalline material, the crack may propagate along
grain boundaries – intergranular
Mohammed Iqbal http://www.jwave.vt.edu/crcd/farkas/lectures/Fract1/fig3.gif
• Typically, any fracture process involves both
crack formation and crack propagation
 in ductile materials the crack will often not propagate unless
additional stress is applied – a stable crack
 the mechanical energy is absorbed by the deformation
 brittle materials fail suddenly and with a large release of
mechanical energy – cracks are unstable

crack propagates by
repeated cycles – fatigue

final failure is brittle

http://www.resnapshot.com/MP1198-2.jpg
Mohammed Iqbal
 Intergranular Fracture

• Intergranular fracture, at two different magnifications.

Grains and grain boundaries are clearly visible in this
micrograph. The fracture path is along the grain
boundaries. Magnification: left, 100X; right, 500X. Source:
Courtesy of B. J. Schulze, S. L. Meiley, and Packer
Engineering Associates, Inc.
Mohammed Iqbal
 Fracture Surface of Steel

• Typical fracture surface of steel that has failed in a brittle

manner. The fracture path is transgranular (through the
grains). Compare this surface with the ductile fracture
surface. Magnification: 200X. Source: Courtesy of B. J.
Schulze, S. L. Meiley, and Packer Engineering Associates,
Inc.

Mohammed Iqbal
Mohammed Iqbal
This is the fracture surface of steel, broken at low
temperature. The steel is a normalised 0.3% carbon
steel and it was broken by a high speed impact at
Mohammed Iqbal
about -190oC.
Comparison between Brittle and Ductile fracture

Ductile fracture Brittle fracture

 Material fractures after plastic deformation and slow  Material fractures with very little or no plastic deformation.
propagation of crack

 Surface obtained at the fracture is dull or fibrous in  Surface obtained at the fracture is shining and crystalling
appearance appearance

 It occurs when the material is in plastic condition.  It occurs when the material is in elastic condition.

 It is characterized by the formation of cup and cone  It is characterized by separation of normal to tensile stress.

 The tendency of ductile fracture is increased by  The tendency brittle fracture is increased by decreasing
dislocations and other defects in metals. temperature, and increasing strain rate.

 There is reduction in cross – sectional area of the  There is no change in the cross – sectional area.
specimen

Mohammed Iqbal
 Stress intensity factor
Stress intensity factor KIC can be described as
fracture toughness of materials (material resistance
to crack propagation) under conditions of :
• 1) brittle fracture
• 2) in the presence of a sharp crack
• 3) under critical tensile loading

• Where
KIC is the critical stress intensity factor for plane strain condition in
mode I failure.
ac is the critical crack length in an infinite plate
σ app is the applied stress
α is a parameter dependent on specimen and crack geometry
Mohammed Iqbal
 Stress intensity factor
• In mode I failure and plane‐strain condition, the
relationship between GIC an KIC can be shown by
an expression as follows :
• Where KIC is the stress intensity factor

Mohammed Iqbal
Crack deformation and Fracture modes

Mohammed Iqbal
 K values of various crack geometries

Mohammed Iqbal
 KIC Fracture toughness
• KIC fracture toughness of material is the ability of the
material to withstand the load in the presence of a sharp
crack before failure.
• Fracture toughness is required in the system of high
strength and light weight, i.e., high strength steels, titanium
and aluminium alloys.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Determination of fracture toughness
• Fracture toughness of material can be determined
according to LEFM analysis
1) KIC fracture toughness: works well for very high strength
materials exhibiting brittle fracture
2) Crack tip opening displacement CTOD :
Used for lower strength materials (σo < 1400 MPa),
exhibiting small amount of plastic deformation before
failure.
3) J‐integral (JIC) :
• Used for lower strength materials, exhibiting small amount
of plastic deformation before failure.
4) R‐curve :
• The resistance to fracture of a material during slow and
stable crack propagation

Mohammed Iqbal
 Fracture toughness
• Fracture toughness is a property
which describes the ability of a
material containing a crack to resist
fracture , and is one of the most
important properties of any material
for virtually all design applications.
• The linear-elastic fracture toughness
of a material is determined from
the Stress intensity factor (K) at which
a thin crack in the material begins to
grow.
• The Fracture toughness is entirely a
material property like Ultimate stress
of a material , and hence the fracture
toughness is independent of the crack
length , geometry , or loading system
and depends only on the nature of the
material.
• They are generally represented as
“Kic”.

Mohammed Iqbal
 The Ductile – Brittle Transition
• The increase in yield stress associated with low
temperature or high strain rates can results in a
material changing its mode of fracture from ductile to
brittle and this is very important when selecting
materials for engineering purposes.
• BCC structure metals experience ductile‐to‐brittle
transition behaviour when subjected to decreasing
temperature, resulting from a strong yield stress
dependent on temperature.

Mohammed Iqbal
 The Ductile – Brittle Transition
• BCC metals possess limited slip systems
available at low temperature, minimizing the
plastic deformation during the fracture process.
• Increasing temperature allows more slip systems
to operate, yielding general plastic deformation to
occur prior to failure .
Theory of the ductile to brittle transition :
• The criterion for a material to change its fracture
behaviour from ductile to brittle mode is when the
yield stress at the observed temperature is larger
than the stress necessary for the growth of the
micro crack indicated in the Griffith theory.

Mohammed Iqbal
 The Ductile – Brittle Transition
• Cottrell studied the role of parameters, which
influence the ductile to‐brittle transition as
follows;

where
τ i is the lattice resistance to dislocation movement
k’ is a parameter related to the release of dislocation into a pile‐up
D is the grain diameter (associated with slip length).
G is the shear modulus
β is a constant depending on the stress system.
s-The effective surface enegry

Mohammed Iqbal
 Ductile-to-Brittle Transition

• The ductile to brittle transition is a very

important engineering phenomenon
which causes the “ductile to brittle”
transition in fracture behavior , which
commonly occurs with decrease in
temperate as in the case of steel and the
other bcc materials as well.
• Consider the equation derived by
Cottrell.
(iD+k’)k’=Gs
• i-The resistance of the lattice to
dislocation movement.
• k’-release of dislocations from a pile-up
• s-The effective surface enegry and
plastic deformations
• -Ratio of shear stress to normal stress

Mohammed Iqbal
• By analysis we find that if the LHS of the equation is smaller than
the RHS , a micro-crack is formed which is non propagative , but
cannot grow.
• When the LHS of the equation is bigger than the RHS , a
propagating brittle fracture can be produced at a shear stress
equal to the yield stress.
• Thus the before equation governs the ductile to brittle transition.
• The temperature that governs the transition of the fracture from
ductile to brittle is known as the transition temperature as shown
in the previous diagram.
• Key features :
 High frictional resistance would always lead to a brittle fracture .
 When the surface energy is large then the brittle fracture is suppressed.

As seen in the following diagram ,

(a) Brittle fracture
(b) Ductile fracture
(c) Completely Ductile fracture

Mohammed Iqbal
 The Ductile – Brittle Transition

Mohammed Iqbal
 The Ductile – Brittle Transition
• The plot of brittle fracture stress (  ) and the
yield stress ( y ) as a function of temperature or
strain rate can explain the ductile to brittle
tranisition.
• The curve for brittle fracture stress rises slightly
because surface energy increases as temperature
decreases.
• The yield stress curve shows the strong
temperature dependence.
• The brittle fracture stress and the yield stress
curves are intersect with each other then a
vertical line is drawn at the point of intersection.
• This is called the ductile brittle transition
temperature.

Mohammed Iqbal
 The Ductile – Brittle Transition
• If a material is stressed at a temperature or strain
rate ,it will reach its yield point before it reaches
the brittle fracture stress and will undergo some
plastic deformation.
• On the other hand, applying a stress under
conditions will result in brittle fracture.
• The temperature range over which the rapid
changes occurs is called the transition region.
• If the curves of yield stress and brittle fracture do
not interest, there is no ductile to brittle
transition.
• The yield stress curves for FCC materials
generally lies below the brittle fracture stress
curves and FCC materials do not experience this
transition.

Mohammed Iqbal
 The Ductile – Brittle Transition
• For mild steel the energy consumed in an impact test as a
function of temperature.

• A high strain rate can be achieved in impact testing

machines by fast loading.

• Increasing the strain rate is equivalent to lowering the

temperature.

• Materials that are ductile when strained slowly at a given

temperature and it will behave in a brittle manner when
subjected to a high strain rate.

• From a design point of view, the ductile to brittle transition

is very dangerous.
Mohammed Iqbal
High Temperature Failure Analysis-CREEP
• Creep occurs under load at high temperature.

• Boilers, gas turbine engines, and ovens are some of the

systems that have components that experience creep.

• An understanding of high temperature materials behavior is

beneficial in evaluating failures in these types of systems.

Mohammed Iqbal
 High Temperature Material Problem
• Mobility of the atoms increase rapidly with
temperature
• Diffusion controlled mechanism can have a
significant effect on high temperature mechanical
properties
• Greater mobility of dislocations
• Vacancies increase
• Deformation at grain boundaries
• Grain coarsening/ Recrystallization
• Interaction with environment

Mohammed Iqbal
• Failures involving creep are usually easy to identify due to
the deformation that occurs.

• Failures may appear ductile or brittle.

• Cracking may be either transgranular or intergranular.

• While creep testing is done at constant temperature and

constant load actual components may experience damage
at various temperatures and loading conditions.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Creep
• “Creep” is referred to the
progressive deformation of the
material at a constant stress.
• A plot of the strain of the material
upon applying a constant load
and a constant temperature ,
against the time gives you the
“creep curve” as shown.
• The rate at which the strain
changes with respect to time is
called as the Creep rate.
• During the initial load the creep
rate decreases with time then
essentially reaches a steady
state in which the creep rate
changes little with time, and
finally the creep rate increases
rapidly with time until fracture
occurs.
Mohammed Iqbal
 A Typical Creep curve

Mohammed Iqbal
• There are 3 stages to the creep curve .
• Primary creep or Transient Creep:
In this stage that the creep rate
gradually decreases with time , and the
above occurs as a consequence of the
creep resistance due to the material
deformation under the load .
• Secondary creep or Steady state creep:
In this stage , the creep rate is
almost nearly a constant .The above is
possible due to the balancing effects of
strain hardening and recovery acting as
competing processes.
• Tertiary creep: This stage, occurs in
constant load creep tests carried out at
high temperatures, at high stresses.
This occurs as a consequence of the
“necking” of the metal before it
undergoes the fracture .
• The third stage is often associated with
metallurgical changes recrystallization
etc.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Typical Creep setup

Mohammed Iqbal
 Deformation mechanism maps

• A deformation mechanism map is

a way of representing the
dominant deformation mechanism
in a material loaded under a given
set of conditions and thereby its
likely failure mode. Deformation
mechanism maps consist of some
kind of stress plotted against
some kind of temperature axis.
• The various types of deformations
or creeps are mentioned in the
map , each separated by
boundaries or lines.
• An example is as shown in the
diagram on the right hand side .

Mohammed Iqbal
 Fatigue
• Fatigue is the progressive and localized structural damage that
occurs when a material is subjected to cyclic loading.
• The nominal maximum stress values are less than the ultimate
tensile values.
• Fatigue results in a brittle-appearing fracture, with no gross
deformation at fracture.
• On macroscopic scales , the fatigue surface is normal to the
direction of the principle tensile stress.
• The fatigue failure is usually recognized with the presence of
both smooth and rough regions.
• The smooth regions occur as a consequence of the rubbing
action as the crack propagated and the rough regions occur as a
consequence of ductile failure when the cross section is no
longer able to carry the load.
• Failure usually occurs at points of stress concentration such as
sharp corners or notches .
Mohammed Iqbal
 Fatigue
• It is estimated that 90% of material failure is due
to fatigue
 repeated load/unload cycles in which the maximum stress is
well below the strength of the material

• Fatigue failure appears brittle-like even in ductile

materials
 and is caused by the repeated formation of small cracks
• Fatigue is characterised by the S-N curve
 plotting S, the stress amplitude (a) of the load cycle, versus
N, the number of cycles to failure

 max   min
a 
2
Mohammed Iqbal
There are three basic factors for the fatigue
failure :-
• Maximum tensile stress of sufficiently
high value
• A large variation or fluctuation in the
applied stress and
• A sufficiently large number of cycles of
the applied stress.
• In addition there are host of other
variables like corrosion , temperature ,
overload , stress concentration ,
metallurgical structure.

• STRESS CYCLE :-
• A stress cycle is defined as a change in
the force distribution being applied upon
the material at regular intervals .
• They can be of many types such as
reverse (a) , repeated (b), irregular or
random stress cycles (c) as well .
• Mohammed
The types areIqbal
as shown in the figure .
 Fatigue Fracture Surfaces

Mohammed Iqbal
 Fatigue Fracture Surfaces

Mohammed Iqbal
 Fatigue Fracture Surfaces

Mohammed Iqbal
 Typical Fatigue Fracture Surface

•Typical fatigue fracture surface on metals, showing beach

marks. Most components in machines and engines fail by
fatigue and not by excessive static loading. Magnification; left,
500X; right, 1000X. Source: Courtesy of B. J. Schulze, S. L.
Meiley, and Packer Engineering Associates, Inc.

Mohammed Iqbal
Mohammed Iqbal
 High-cycle fatigue
• High cycle fatigue of the material is that failure that occurs
when the number of cycles that the material undergoes in
very high that is in the order of 10,0000 cycles etc.

• The following are the key features necessary for the high
cycle fatigue.
- Stress below yield strength
- Macroscopically brittle
- May be very long life

Mohammed Iqbal
 S-N Curves
• In high-cycle
fatigue situations,
materials
performance is
commonly
characterized by
an S-N curve, also
known as a
Wöhler curve .
This is a graph of
the magnitude of
a cyclic stress (S)
against the
logarithmic scale
of cycles to
failure (N).

Mohammed Iqbal
 Mechanism involved

• There are three steps to the High cycle fatigue .

• Local yielding at a defect or in a stress concentration
(filet root, scratch, bend, hole)
• Dislocation pile up/ saturation
• Crack formation
• Crack propagation

Mohammed Iqbal
 Low cycle fatigue
• When fatigue occurs within lesser number of
cycles with stresses greater that yielding
strength is called as the low fatigue failure .
• The features are as follows :-
• Stress exceeds yield strength
• Very few cycles to failure
• Lots of plastic deformation

Mohammed Iqbal
 Mechanism involved

• There are 4 steps again :-

• Sharp Crack – closed
• Stress opens crack
• Tip of crack blunts
• Crack closure/ sharpening
• Repeat

Mohammed Iqbal
 Fracture of non metallic materials

• In brittle fracture, no apparent

plastic deformation takes
place before fracture.
• In brittle crystalline materials,
fracture can occur by cleavage
as the result of tensile stress
acting normal to
crystallographic planes with
low bonding (cleavage
planes).
• In amorphous solids, by
contrast, the lack of a
crystalline structure results in
a special type of fracture, with
cracks proceeding normal to
the applied tension.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Fatigue testing
• Methods used to test materials:

One of the simplest tests - m is always zero, rotation

allows very large number of cycles to be easily
tested.

m can be tensile or compressive, tends to be slower

than rotating bend test.

For both of these tests m can be tensile, test tends to

be slower than rotating bend.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Fatigue testing
• In fatigue testing it is important to avoid stress
concentration.
 changes in section of all the test pieces are reduced so as to
minimise this effect
 specimens are then polished to a mirror finish to ensure that
specimens are as identical as is possible

Mohammed Iqbal
 Fatigue testing

Mohammed Iqbal
 S-N curve
• There are two general types of S-N curve
stress amplitude stress amplitude

e.g. Fe, Ti e.g. Al, Cu

fatigue limit

103 105 107 109 103 105 107 109

cycles to failure (log scale) cycles to failure (log scale)

Mohammed Iqbal
• Some materials reach a fatigue limit (at 35% to
65% of tensile strength) below which fatigue
failure will not occur regardless of the number of
cycles
• Others will fail at some N, regardless of the stress
amplitude – e.g. Al
• Fatigue strength
 the stress level at which failure occurs after a specified
number of cycles
• Fatigue life
 number of cycles to failure at a particular stress amplitude

Mohammed Iqbal
 Surface
Finish and
Fatigue
Strength

•Reduction in fatigue
strength of cast steels
subjected to various
surface-finishing
operations. Note that
the reduction is greater
as the surface
roughness and strength
of the steel increase.
Source: M. R. Mitchell.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Stress concentration
• The key to understanding fracture mechanics is
the concept of stress concentration
 at a sharp corner – such as the tip of a crack – a local
enhancement (or concentration) of stress occurs
 i.e. the local stress is significantly higher than the average
applied stress
 hence the material fails at a lower stress than otherwise
predicted
 (a little like a lightning conductor)
• And all materials contain cracks, surface
scratches etc.

Mohammed Iqbal
• If, to keep the math simple, we assume an elliptical crack

a 1 2
 m  2 0  
t 

 where rt is the radius of the crack tip and a is half the length of the
ellipse axis

Callister

Mohammed Iqbal
 Crack propagation
• If the crack is long and sharp, the stress at the tip
can be many times the applied stress
• The effect depends on whether the material is
ductile or brittle
 a ductile material will deform plastically, which serves to
increase the tip radius and decrease the stress – assitsing
the formation of stable cracks
 brittle materials feel the full effect of the concentration
• Griffith developed a simple model to derive the
critical stress required for a crack to propagate in
a brittle material …

Mohammed Iqbal
 Failure Analysis
• Failure analysis is process of obtaining information (as
much as possible ) from the “failed” part itself along with
the investigation of the conditions at the time of failure .
• A component is said to have failed is the “unacceptable”
deformation or fracture, which is a relative term. (The term
varies depending upon the product description)
• The failure analysis has its fundamental use in the
“Reliability” of the product being manufactured that
determines his popularity and the extent to which
customer satisfaction is achieved by the same .
• There various types of failures that occur , some of them
are as follows :
 Fracture
 Fatigue
 Creep
Mohammed Iqbal
 Source of failure
• Failure causes are defects in design, process, quality, or part
application, which are the underlying cause of a failure or which
initiate a process which leads to failure. Where failure depends on the
user of the product or process, then human error must be considered.
• They include corrosion, welding of contacts due to an abnormal
electrical current, return spring fatigue failure, unintended command
failure, dust accumulation and blockage of mechanism, etc.
• The real root causes can in theory in most cases be traced back to
some kind of human error, e.g. design failure, operational errors.
• Some types of mechanical failure mechanisms are: excessive
deflection, buckling, ductile fracture, brittle fracture, impact, creep,
relaxation, thermal shock, wear, corrosion, stress corrosion cracking,
and various types of fatigue.
• Each produces a different type of fracture surface, and other
indicators near the fracture surface(s).
• The way the product is loaded, and the loading history are also
important factors which determine the outcome. Of critical importance
is design geometry because stress concentrations can magnify the
applied load locally to very high levels, and from which cracks usually
grow.

Mohammed Iqbal
 Procedure to Failure analysis

• They are of many steps :-

• Initial observation :
• -Make a detailed visual study of the actual component that failed.
• Record all details by photographs
• Interpretation must be made of deformation markings, fracture
appearance, deterioration etc.
• Background data :
• -Collect all data concerned with specifications and drawings,
component design, fabrication, repairs, maintenance and service
use.
• Laboratory studies:
• -Verify the chemical composition of the material within specified
limits.
• Other tests such as NDT(Non –destructive tests) , heat treatment are
carried out.
• Synthesis of Failure :
• Study all the positives and negatives of the situation and indicate a
solution to
Mohammed the problem of failure.
Iqbal