Merit Indices

• Assumes no interaction between the functions.

•

Fracture Mechanics
Testing
• Single-Edge-Notch specimen (where crack is grown through fatigue loading) or Compact
Tensile Specimen (where crack is grown by pulling upper and lower bit of specimen apart).
• Measurement of K is overestimated if specimen fails in plane stress, thus thickness must be
large enough to assume plane strain. Critical dimension is KQ2 / y2. For a valid test, t>2.5D.
This condition ensures the thickness is 20 times the size of the crack-tip plastic zone.
• Requirements: simple geometry, thick enough test piece, small enough test piece for
machine capacity, ability to grow starter crack (often machined notch), clip gauge or
sensitive detection of crack growth, load cell or determination of force at which a given
amount of crack extension happens

Design
• Yield-before-break: sy<sf
• Leak-before-break: safest, most conservative
• Yield limited: least conservative, used when failure isn’t catastrophic.
• Defect tolerant: more conservative and safer than yield limited, though requires regular
NDE.

Creep
General
• If constant stress, strain increases slowly. If constant strain, stress relaxation.
• Increased stress or T: higher 0, lower tR, higher minimum creep rate.
• During constant creep rate: work hardened material + heat = annealing. Increased ductility
and decreased hardness.
𝑄
• Constitutive equation: 𝜀𝐼𝐼̇ = 𝐾𝜎 𝑛 𝑒 −𝑅𝑇
• Arrhenius plot: take natural logs of the thing.

Creep Measurement
Extrapolation
• Good because enables comparison of materials and determination of lifetime.
• Bad because usually involves testing at much higher temperatures or stresses than operating
– extrapolation mistakes are common and severe.
• Dangers: unexpected changes can happen with different stresses or temperatures, e.g.
change in n or Q. Elevated temperature can cause phase change, new grain growth,
precipitate formation, oxidation, thus change in microstructure which affects results. Multi-
axial loading in real life, not in tests. Loss of accuracy from log curves.
• LMP: test for time to rupture for several stresses and temperatures, plot Arrhenius curve.
Assuming constant strain to failure (𝑡𝑅 𝜀̇𝐼𝐼 = 𝐾) and steady creep to rupture, combine
equations to find LMP for specific temperature and stress.
 • Dorn: test strain rates for several stresses and temperatures, plot Arrhenius curve. Assuming
intercept changes with stress, find intercept to obtain creep rate for components at known
temperatures. Activation energy Q must be known. DP is the natural log of the intercept.

Time to rupture:
• apply constant load at fixed temperature.
• Neglect the shape of creep curve, only time to rupture is measured and strain at failure is
measured, at fixed stress and temperature.
• Widely used, because cheap and quick (< 1000 h).
• Uniaxial loading (this is essential – knife edges or universal couplings incorporated to avoid
bending stresses), while in real life loading is more complex, like tensional and torsional
loading.
• Used in applications where strain is not a serious problem, e.g. super-heater steam tubes.

Strain Rate:
• Apply constant load at fixed temperature. Relatively low load compared to TTR.
• Continually monitor specimen gauge length to obtain full creep curve.
• Measurements are made directly on specimen (not via loading lever etc.) with an
extensometer attached to it.
• Expensive, as precision strain measurements must be made at elevated temperature, also
the test is very long (2000 – 10 000 h).

Creep Resistance
• Precipitation hardening
• Covalent bonding, e.g. high lattice resistance
• High melting temperature

Creep Relaxation
• total strain is sum of elastic strain and creep strain and doesn’t change.
• Remember integral:
 𝜎 𝑡
𝑑𝜎 1 1
∫ 𝑛 = −𝐴𝐸 ∫ 𝑑𝑡 ↔ 𝑛−1 − 𝑛−1 = 𝐴𝐸𝑡(𝑛 − 1)
𝜎 𝜎 𝜎0
𝜎0 0

Fatigue
General
• Damage mechanism due to repetition of fluctuating loads but below ultimate tensile stress,
resulting in load bearing capability and permanent structural changes.
• Important words: structural phenomenon, fatigue performance defined by material &
geometry
• Fatigue life = crack nucleation → Micro crack growth → Macro crack growth → Failure

Microcracks
• Can be a slow process, e.g. grain boundaries act as obstacles.
• Moving dislocations along slip bands, where shear stress is high.
• Cyclic slip leads to intrusions, so de-cohesion of metals.
• Single load cycle is enough for microcrack, extended in each cycle.
• Irreversible local surface phenomenon: plastic deformation of few grains at free surface.
• Important: Stress concentration factor Kt
• Design against crack initiation: avoid stress concentration through fillet radii, low surface
roughness

Crack Growth
• More regular growth at steadily increasing rate, independent of surface conditions. Stress
intensity factor is critical.
• Macrocracks can be detected by eye or NDE.
• Can be expressed by Basquin relation, although this is obtained at a mean stress of 0. Use
Goodman for other values of Sm.
• <104 cycles = low cycle fatigue, >105 cycles = high cycle fatigue

Effect of Surface Finish

• A rougher surface decreases the fatigue limit, meaning there is now a range of amplitudes
which would not initiate crack growth without the surface damage, but are harmful with the
surface damage.
• A low stress amplitude for surface damaged components means a large fatigue life and a
shift of the knew to the right on the SN-curve.

Striations
• Crack usually grows perpendicular to applied load.
• At every load cycle, crack is
• Extension = de-cohesion
• At every load cycle, crack is opened by plastic deformation of crack tip, along slip zones
which are the planes of maximum shear. These are not fully reversible, so when crack is
closed, micro-plastic deformation is left on upper and lower surface of crack → striations, in
the range of 0.2 m.
• Kt is no longer significant, because during crack growth, the crack is a notch with zero radius,
meaning Kt would become infinite for all crack lengths. Therefore, the stress intensity factor
K is introduced.
Measurement
• Can be done on plate specimen with central hole and two saw cuts on both sides of hole.
The length of the crack is 2a, and the change of a with time is in m/cycle.
• Paris law: uses similarity principle in that for different stress amplitudes, the crack growth
𝑑𝑎
can be the same for two components if the stress intensities are the same, so = 𝐶 ∆𝐾 𝑛
𝑑𝑡
• Paris law only works if K is between Kth, the threshold intensity factor below which crack
growth slows down and comes to a stop, and Kmax=Kc.

Goodman Relation
• Application of Kt is reasonable for low Sm, however if mean stress is high, significant plastic
deformation occurs in the notch cross-section, making the stress distribution more
homogenous and the concept of Kt inapplicable. If Kt is applied as usual, the Goodman
relation and the Sm- intercept is far too pessimistic.
• Yield line: root notch plasticity occurs if KtSmax>Syield.

Variable Amplitude Loading

• Miner’s Rule works in percentages of fatigue life.
• Problem for Miner’s rule: ignores the effect of notches, ignores plasticity induced by certain
sequence, ignores the fatigue damage contribution of cycles below fatigue limit to crack
growth, ignores whether or not the last cycle left a favourable negative residual stress at
notch root or an unfavourable tensile residual stress.

Composites
General
• Matrix with high toughness, fibres with high stiffness.
• Inhomogeneous at microscale, homogenous at macroscale.
• Advantages: weight reduction, high strength and stiffness, high toughness, tailorable
properties, impact resistance
• Disadvantages: expensive, brittle failure mechanism

Components
Fibres
• Functions: discontinuous, retains strength during handling, stiff, harder and stronger,
reinforcement, uniform cross-section
• Glass Fibres: based on silica or silicon dioxide. Manufactured from melt, drawn into
filaments through heated nozzles. Filaments collected into strands, then dried in oven. Used
in wind turbine blades. High strength to weight, corrosion resistance, cheap. Poor fatigue,
low stiffness, high specific gravity.
• Carbon Fibres: based on graphite or carbon atoms. Manufactured by stretching
polyacrylonitrile polymer fibres to improve mechanical properties: 200 - 300° to stabilise
form, 1500°C to carbonise, 2500°C improves crystallinity, more graphitic microstructure.
Used in aero. High E, strength, low density, good fatigue, high thermal conductivity. Low
impact resistance, expensive.
• Aramid Fibres: Highly crystalline polymer fibres made of C, H, O, N, with highly aligned
molecules so good alternative to glass fibres. Manufactured from PPTA polymer & sulfuric
acid solution, extrusion through spinning holes, molecules form liquid crystalline domains,
coagulation in water bath, then washed, neutralised, wound. Used in aero, armour, sports.
 Low density, high impact resistance, high strength / weight, high chemical and heat
resistance. Degradation in sunlight, low compressive properties.

Matrix
• Functions: continuous, holds fibres together, distributes load between fibres, protects fibres
from abrasion & environment
• Thermosets (60%): insoluble, infusible after cure. High modulus & strength, brittle. Good for
load-bearing structural applications. Hard to recycle or reshape. Examples: polyesters, epoxy
resins.
• Thermoplastics: formable at high temperatures & pressures. Produces in block / sheet, can
be reformed and recycled. Lower E and yield strength, limited to <150°C, ductile. Not used
for structural load-bearing applications. Examples: polypropylene, nylons.

Micromechanics
• Longitudinal Young’s Modulus: obtain using iso-strain condition. Ec = EfVf + EmVm
• Transverse Young’s Modulus: obtain using iso-stress condition.
• Poisson’s ratio: add Poisson’s displacements, end up with rule of mixtures again.
• Shear Modulus: inverse rule of mixtures.

Macromechanics
• Krenchel’s approximations assumes no interaction between the plies, neglects the Poisson’s
effect and assumes a uniform cross-section of fibres, with perfectly parallel alignment within
one layer. It also assumes equal strain for matrix and fibre in the direction of applied load.