Relationship between the fracture toughness of bulk polymer and fiber-reinforced polymer composites

Bhawesh Kumar, Purdue University

Abstract

Improving the fracture toughness of the polymer matrix has been a concentration of research effort for several years. However, improving the toughness of polymers is not sufficient to translate it into a greater toughness of their composites, because there is no linear relationship between the fracture toughness of polymer matrix and that of the composites. Failures in fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites are often found to occur in the polymer matrix. This matrix-dominated fracture of FRP composites is controlled by the mechanics of crack growth in the matrix. Therefore, it is of great interest to establish a relationship between the fracture toughness of the bulk polymer matrix and the FRP composites. The presence of fibers affects the near tip stress field and governs the instability of the crack. The constraining due to fiber changes the K-dominance at the vicinity of the crack tip. In the present work, a brittle polymer was considered for a series of fracture experiments to study the effect of K-dominance. The critical stress intensity factor was found to be a function of the loading and specimen configurations. Therefore, the common notion of assuming that only critical stress intensity factor is necessary to predict the fracture behavior of brittle materials is questionable. Loading or specimen configurations changes the level of K-dominance. A detailed K-dominance zone analysis shows that singular stress field is not dominant for most cases, and consequently, the stress intensity factor alone cannot explain the fracture behavior. A two-parameter model, based on the both singular and nonsingular stress fields, was proposed and validated with the experiments. Further experiments were performed on the bulk polymer matrix and layered specimens of composites and polymer matrix. A two-parameter fracture model was proposed for the bulk polymer matrix, which follows the same trend as the FRP composites analyzed using layered local model. The adequacy of the conventional approach of calculating strain energy release rate was examined for the local model of composites based on the K-dominance zone size. Finally, a simplified fracture model was proposed for the FRP composites homogenized as an orthotropic solid. The predicted fracture load using the proposed fracture model for composites shows a good agreement with the experiment.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Sun, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Aerospace engineering|Mechanical engineering|Materials science

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