Grain–boundary interactions and orientation effects on crack behavior in polycrystalline aggregates

A dislocation-density grain–boundary interaction scheme has been developed to account for the interrelated dislocation-density interactions of emission, absorption and transmission in GB regions. The GB scheme is based on slip-system compatibility, local resolved shear stresses, and immobile and mobile dislocation-density accumulation at critical GB locations. To accurately represent dislocation-density evolution, a conservation law for dislocation-densities is used to balance dislocation-density absorption, transmission and emission from the GB. The behavior of f.c.c. polycrystalline copper, with different random low and high angle GBs, are investigated for different crack lengths. For aggregates with random low angle GBs, dislocation-density transmission dominates at the GBs, which can indicate that the low angle GB will not significantly change crack growth directions. For aggregates with random high angle GBs, extensive dislocation-density absorption and pile-ups occur. The high stresses associated with this behavior, along the GBs, can result in intergranular crack growth due to potential crack nucleation sites in the GB.     

Effects of surface diffusion and resolved shear stress intensity factor on environmentally assisted cracking

Hydrogen induced crack-tip plastic deformation has been known as the primary mechanism of hydrogen assisted cracking and stress corrosion cracking. It has been systematically shown that the same mechanism of environmentally assisted crack-tip dislocation emission causes hydrogen assisted cracking, stress corrosion cracking, and liquid metal embrittlement cracking.An embrittling chemical species has to reach a crack tip in order to accelerate crack growth. Very close to a sharp crack tip, surface diffusion is shown to be the dominant transport process of embrittling species for stage-II crack growth. The role of surface diffusion in stage II crack growth is analyzed. The constant cracking velocity is proportional to the surface diffusion coefficient of an embrittling species and inversely proportional to a length parameter, , which is related to the transport process upstream.Dislocation emission at a crack tip is driven by crack-tip resolved shear stress. Crack-tip resolved shear stress field is characterized by resolved shear stress intensity factor, K_RSS·K_RSS is defined, the procedure for its calculation outlined, and its applications to crack-tip dislocation emission and environmentally assisted cracking discussed.     

Finite deformation analysis of crack-tip opening in elastic-plastic materials and implications for fracture

Analyses of the stress and strain fields around smoothly-blunting crack tips in both non-hardening and hardening elastic-plastic materials, under contained plane-strain yielding and subject to mode I opening loads, have been carried out by use of a finite element method suitably formulated to admit large geometry changes. The results include the crack-tip shape and near-tip deformation field, and the crack-tip opening displacement has been related to a parameter of the applied load, the J-integral. The hydrostatic stresses near the crack tip are limited due to the lack of constraint on the blunted tip, limiting achievable stress levels except in a very small region around the crack tip in power-law hardening materials. The J-integral is found to be path-independent except very close to the crack tip in the region affected by the blunted tip. Models for fracture are discussed in the light of these results including one based on the growth of voids. The rate of void-growth near the tip in hardening materials seems to be little different from the rate in non-hardening ones when measured in terms of crack-tip opening displacement, which leads to a prediction of higher toughness in hardening materials. It is suggested that improvement of this model would follow from better understanding of void-void and void-crack coalescence and void nucleation, and some criteria and models for these effects are discussed. The implications of the finite element results for fracture criteria based on critical stress or strain, or both, is discussed with respect to transition of fracture mode and the angle of initial crack-growth. Localization of flow is discussed as a possible fracture model and as a model for void-crack coalescence.     

Transient crack growth under creep conditions

Transient crack growth in an elastic/power-law creeping material is investigated under antiplane shear loading and small-scale-yielding conditions. At time t = 0 the solid is suddenly loaded far from the crack by tractions that correspond to the elastic crack-tip stress distribution. At that time the crack begins to propagate at a constant velocity. The stress fields evolve in a complex manner as the crack propagates due to the competing effects of stress relaxation due to constrained creep and stress elevation due to the instantaneous elastic material response to crack growth. From detailed finite element calculations it is shown that these fields can be approximated by a simple matching of three asymptotic singular crack-tip solutions. A characteristic stress, distance and time are defined for this problem which provide a normalization that accounts for any crack velocity, loading and all material properties for a given creep exponent n. Results are presented for crack-tip stresses, strains, crack opening displacements and creep zones.     

Dynamic curving cracks in functionally graded materials under thermo-mechanical loading

Mixed-mode dynamic crack growth along an arbitrarily smoothly varying path in functionally graded materials (FGMs) under thermo-mechanical loading is studied. The property gradation in FGMs is considered by varying shear-modulus, mass density, thermal conductivity and coefficient of thermal expansion exponentially along the gradation direction. Asymptotic analysis in conjunction with displacement potentials is used to develop the stress fields around propagating cracks in FGMs. Asymptotic temperature fields are developed first for the exponential variation of thermal conductivity and later these temperature fields are used to derive thermo-mechanical stress fields for a curving crack in FGMs. Using these thermo-mechanical stress fields, various components of the stresses are developed and the effect of curvature parameters, temperature and gradation on these stresses are discussed. Finally, using the minimum strain energy density criterion, the effect of curvature parameters, crack-tip speeds, non-homogeneity values and temperature gradients on crack growth directions are determined and discussed.     

裂纹面摩擦接触引起的断裂韧性增长的研究

采用弹黏塑性的材料本构关系, 建立了压、剪混合型裂纹常速准静 态扩展的力学模型, 求得了裂纹面摩擦接触条件下裂纹尖端场的数值解, 并基于数 值结果讨论了扩展裂纹的摩擦效应. 计算和分析表明, 裂纹面的摩擦效应主要表现 在两个方面. 第一方面是摩擦会导致裂纹尖端区材料的断裂韧性增高, 并且裂纹面间的摩擦作用越强, 增韧效果越显著. 摩擦增韧的机制可以解释为裂纹 面间的摩擦作用导致裂纹尖端塑性区尺寸变大, 使裂纹尖端场的塑性变形能增加, 从而使得裂纹尖端区材料增韧. 摩擦生热并不是导致材料断裂韧性增长的根本机制. 第二方面是摩擦会导致``断裂延缓'. 利用裂纹面的摩擦来提高构件的承载能力和延长构件的服役寿命具有较大的工程实用价值.     

压-剪混合型定常扩展裂纹尖端的弹黏塑性场

假定黏性系数与塑性等效应变率的幂次成反比,考虑其黏性和裂纹面摩擦接触效应 建立了压-剪混合型定常扩展裂纹尖端弹黏塑性场的渐近方程,求得了裂纹尖端场不含应力、应变间 断的数值解. 并讨论了压-剪混合型裂纹数值解随各个参数的变化规律,计算结果 和分析表明,压-剪混合型裂纹尖端场是满塑性的,不含有弹性卸载区,黏性效应是研究扩展裂纹尖端场时的一个重要因素. 无论混合裂纹趋近I型还是趋近II型,静水压力随摩擦系数的增加都是增加的,裂纹面摩擦 效应是阻止裂纹扩展速度的因素,且摩擦作用越强,裂纹尖端场的韧性越高.     

Crack-tip fields for fast fracture of an elastic-plastic material

An asymptotic analysis of the near-tip fields is given for transient crack propagation in an elastic-plastic material. The material is characterized by J₂ flow theory together with a bilinear effective stress-strain curve. Both plane stress and plane strain conditions have been considered. Explicit results are given for the order of the crack-tip singularity, the angular position at which unloading occurs, and the angular variation of the near-tip stresses, all as functions of the crack-tip speed and the ratio of the slopes of the two portions of the bilinear stress-strain relation. It was found that the results are much more sensitive to the elastic-plastic constitutive relation than to the crack speed. This result is important for numerical analyses of dynamic crack propagation problems.     

ASYMPTOTIC ANALYSIS OF MODE Ⅱ STATIONARY GROWTHCRACK ON ELASTIC-ELASTIC POWER LAWCREEPING BIMATERIAL INTERFACE

A mechanical model was established for mode Ⅱ interfacial crack static growingalong an elastic-elastic power law creeping bimaterial interface. For two kinds of boundaryconditions on crack faces, traction free and frictional contact, asymptotic solutions of thestress and strain near tip-crack were given. Results derived indicate that the stress andstrain have the same singularity, there is not the oscillatory singularity in the field; thecreep power-hardening index n and the ratio of Young‘s module notably influence the crack-tip field in region of elastic power law creeping material and n only influences distribution ofstresses and strains in region of elastic material. When n is bigger, the creepingdeformation is dominant and stress fields become steady, which does not change with n.Poisson‘s ratio does not affect the distributing of the crack-tip field.     

Stresses near a crack in a rubber sheet

The principal stresses in the vicinity of the crack tip in a rubber sheet have been determined experimentally by measuring the strain field with the aid of an imprinted grid work and calculating the stresses by assuming neo-Hookean material behavior. The principal stresses in the crack-tip vicinity are presented graphically. A correlation between the measured maximum tensile stress on the crack axis and that obtained from infinitesimal-elasticity theory is established. Information is given which provides bounds on the loading and deformation within which a large-deformation elastic analysis is valid before geometric deformations due to tearing must be considered.     

Relationships between the J-integral and the crack opening displacement for stationary and extending cracks

Relationships between the J-integral and the crack opening displacement δ_t are obtained by exploiting the dominance of the Hutchinson-Rice-Rosengren singularity in the crack-tip region. The coefficient d_n that relates J to δ_t, is dependent on the material deformation properties and is independent of crack configuration under small-scale yielding conditions. For low hardening materials, d_n appears to be configuration dependent in the fully yielded state. Similarly, the slope of the J-resistance curve is relatable to an operationally defined crack opening angle if J-controlled crack growth conditions are met. These relationships are corroborated by finite element results for the complete regime of elastic-plastic deformation and experimental data for A533B steels, HY-80 steels and several other ductile metals.     

Determining the size and location of transverse cracks in beams

The spectral element method, which is very suitable for solving inverse dynamic problems, is combined with a stochastic genetic algorithm to give a scheme that can locate and size cracks in structural components. The mechanical model is based on an approach that separates the global structural dynamics from the local crack-tip zone dominated by singular stresses. The global model, consisting of connected waveguides, describes the structural dynamics using spectral elements. The local model, describing the crack-tip behavior, is based on the relation between the stress-intensity factor and the stored strain energy representing the crack region. The results are demonstrated with experimental data from an aluminum beam with a transverse crack.     

Role of elasticity in elastic–plastic fracture: Analytical bi-linear crack-tip fields and finite element analysis

A solution for Model-I plane strain crack tip fields in a bi-linear elastic–plastic material is presented. The elastic–plastic Poisson's ratio is introduced to characterize the influence of elastic deformation on the near tip constraint. Attention is focused on the distribution of elastic/plastic strain energy in the sensitive region of the forward sector ahead of a crack tip. The present study shows that the elastic strain energy can be higher than the plastic strain energy in this sensitive sector while large amount of the plastic strain energy develops outside this sector around the crack tip. The effect of elastic deformation in this sensitive region on the structure of crack-tip fields is considerable and the assumption in some important solutions for crack-tip fields reported in literature that the elastic deformation is small and can be ignored is therefore not physically reasonable. Besides, finite element analysis is carried out to validate the analytical solution and good agreement between them is found. It is seen that the present solution with T-stress can properly describe the crack-tip fields under various constraints for different specimens and an analytical relation is established between the critical value of J-integral, J_c, and T-stress for elastic–plastic fracture.     

The interaction between a screw dislocation and a piezoelectric fiber composite with a wedge crack

The interaction problem between a screw dislocation and a piezoelectric fiber composite with a semi-infinite wedge crack is investigated in this paper. The piezoelectric media are assumed to be transversely isotropic with the poling direction along the x ₃ direction. The screw dislocation considered here involves a Burgers vector parallel to the poling direction with a line force and a line charge being applied at the core of the dislocation. Both cases of the screw dislocation located at the matrix and inclusion are observed. The analytical derivation is based on the complex variable and the conformal mapping methods. The exact solutions are obtained to calculate the forces on the dislocation and the crack-tip stress and electric displacement intensity factors. Based on these results, the anti-shielding and shielding effects for different loadings, material combinations, and geometric configurations are discussed in detail.     

On the driving force for crack growth during thermal actuation of shape memory alloys

The effect of thermomechanically induced phase transformation on the driving force for crack growth in polycrystalline shape memory alloys is analyzed in an infinite center-cracked plate subjected to a thermal actuation cycle under mechanical load in plain strain. Finite element calculations are carried out to determine the mechanical fields near the static crack and the crack-tip energy release rate using the virtual crack closure technique. A substantial increase of the energy release rate – an order of magnitude for some material systems – is observed during the thermal cycle due to the stress redistribution induced by large scale phase transformation. Thus, phase transformation occurring due to thermal variations under mechanical load may result in crack growth if the crack-tip energy release rate reaches a material specific critical value.     

On fatigue crack growth in ductile materials by crack-tip blunting

One of the basic mechanisms for fatigue crack growth in ductile metals is that depending on crack-tip blunting under tensile loads and re-sharpening of the crack-tip during unloading. In a standard numerical analysis accounting for finite strains it is not possible to follow this process during many cycles, as severe mesh distortion at the crack-tip results from the huge geometry changes developing during the cyclic plastic straining. In the present numerical studies, based on an elastic-perfectly plastic material model, crack growth computations are continued up to 200 full cycles by using remeshing at several stages of the plastic deformation. Three different values of the load ratio R=K_min/K_max are considered. It is shown that the crack-tip opening displacement, CTOD, typically undergoes a transient behaviour, with no crack closure during many cycles, before a steady-state cycling with crack closure at the tip starts to gradually develop.     

Intergranular strain evolution near fatigue crack tips in polycrystalline metals

The deformation field near a steady fatigue crack includes a plastic zone in front of the crack tip and a plastic wake behind it, and the magnitude, distribution, and history of the residual strain along the crack path depend on the stress multiaxiality, material properties, and history of stress intensity factor and crack growth rate. An in situ, full-field, non-destructive measurement of lattice strain (which relies on the intergranular interactions of the inhomogeneous deformation fields in neighboring grains) by neutron diffraction techniques has been performed for the fatigue test of a Ni-based superalloy compact tension specimen. These microscopic grain level measurements provided unprecedented information on the fatigue growth mechanisms. A two-scale model is developed to predict the lattice strain evolution near fatigue crack tips in polycrystalline materials. An irreversible, hysteretic cohesive interface model is adopted to simulate a steady fatigue crack, which allows us to generate the stress/strain distribution and history near the fatigue crack tip. The continuum deformation history is used as inputs for the micromechanical analysis of lattice strain evolution using the slip-based crystal plasticity model, thus making a mechanistic connection between macro- and micro-strains. Predictions from perfect grain-boundary simulations exhibit the same lattice strain distributions as in neutron diffraction measurements, except for discrepancies near the crack tip within about one-tenth of the plastic zone size. By considering the intergranular damage, which leads to vanishing intergranular strains as damage proceeds, we find a significantly improved agreement between predicted and measured lattice strains inside the fatigue process zone. Consequently, the intergranular damage near fatigue crack tip is concluded to be responsible for fatigue crack growth.     

An embedded crack in a functionally graded orthotropic coating bonded to a homogeneous substrate under a frictional Hertzian contact

In this paper, we consider the elasto-static problem of an embedded crack in a graded orthotropic coating bonded to a homogeneous substrate subject to statically applied normal and tangential surface loading. The crack direction is parallel to the free surface. The coating is graded in the thickness direction and is orthogonal to the crack direction. This coating is modelled as a non-homogeneous medium with an orthotropic stress–strain law. The equivalent crack surface stresses are first obtained and substituted in the plane elasticity equations. Using integral transforms, the governing equations are converted into singular integral equations which are solved numerically to yield the displacement field as well as the crack-tip stress intensity factors. This study presents a complete theoretical formulation for the problem in the static case. A numerical predictive capability for solving the singular integral equations and computing the crack-tip stress intensity factors is proposed. Since the loading is compressive, a previously developed crack-closure algorithm is applied to avoid interpenetration of the crack faces. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the effects of the material orthotropy and non-homogeneity of the graded coating on the crack-tip stress intensity factors, with and without using the crack-closure algorithm, for the purpose of gaining better understanding on the behavior and design of graded coatings.     

On the toughening of brittle materials by grain bridging: Promoting intergranular fracture through grain angle, strength, and toughness

The structural reliability of many brittle materials such as structural ceramics relies on the occurrence of intergranular, as opposed to transgranular, fracture in order to induce toughening by grain bridging. For a constant grain boundary strength and grain boundary toughness, the current work examines the role of grain strength, grain toughness, and grain angle in promoting intergranular fracture in order to maintain such toughening. Previous studies have illustrated that an intergranular path and the consequent grain bridging process can be partitioned into five distinct regimes, namely: propagate, kink, arrest, stall, and bridge. To determine the validity of the assumed intergranular path, the classical penetration/deflection problem of a crack impinging on an interface is re-examined within a cohesive zone framework for intergranular and transgranular fracture. Results considering both modes of propagation, i.e., a transgranular and intergranular path, reveal that crack-tip shielding is a natural outcome of the cohesive zone approach to fracture. Cohesive zone growth in one mode shields the opposing mode from the stresses required for cohesive zone initiation. Although stable propagation occurs when the required driving force is equivalent to the toughness for either transgranular or intergranular fracture, the mode of propagation depends on the normalized grain strength, normalized grain toughness, and grain angle. For each grain angle, the intersection of single path and multiple path solutions demarcates “strong” grains that increase the macroscopic toughness and “weak” grains that decrease it. The unstable transition to intergranular fracture reveals that an increasing grain toughness requires a growing region of the transgranular cohesive zone be near the cohesive strength. The inability of the body to provide the requisite stress field yields an overdriven and unstable configuration. The current results provide restrictions for the achievement of substantial toughening through intergranular fracture.