Crack-tip damage and fracture toughness of borsic/titanium composite

The fracture behavior of center-notched unidirectional borsic/titanium composites under uniaxial tensile loading has been investigated. Load-crack-opening displacement (COD) curves were obtained for crack length-to-width ratios ranging from 0.05 to 0.5. The COD was measured across the crack surfaces by means of laser interferometric displacement gage (gage length of 500 μm). As expected, the interferometric displacement gage (IDG) was very sensitive to the appearance of damage at the crack tip, yielding nonlinear load-COD curves. The crack-tip damage in borsic/titanium was found to grow coplanarly with the original crack and consist of fiber breaks and matrix plastic deformation, the former preceding the latter. The failure mode and the crack-tip-damage growth were found to be different from those observed in unidirectional boron/aluminum and these differences are discussed. The examination techniques include radiography, SEM, photomicrographs, interference microscope and optical-interferometry technique. It was found that the fracture strengths and crack-tip-damage growth can be analyzed by the analytical models proposed in the literature. The resistance-curve method was also tried and found to be applicable. A correlation has been established among the fracture strength, crack-opening displacement and failure mode.