A Comprehensive Study of Fracture Toughness Determination from Conventional and Unconventional Methods

Abstract

In this work fracture toughness is determined by the Toughness model; Critical Stress-Strain Model and Energy release rate model using unconventional test method referred to as Spherical Indentation test (SIT) to reduce the large and costly experimental set up as required in Conventional Fracture Toughness Test. The toughness model correlates the indentation energy to fracture with fracture toughness, Critical Stress-Strain Model assumes that the critical fracture toughness is equal to the critical plastic work done by the material when a crack tends to propagate and as per the Energy release rate model, indentation depth is given by loading-unloading cycles. The unloading slope which is elastic provides the reduced Young’s Modulus of the material from each unloading cycle which reflects the occurrence of damage in the material. For the determination of contact radius at different indentation points, finite element analysis is performed using the material data obtained from the tensile test result obtained from the previous work of the author. Conventional method using the Compact Tension (CT) and Three-Point Bending (TPB) specimens for the same material is used to determine the fracture toughness and compared with the above-described model.