On the quantification of bridging tractions during subcritical crack growth under monotonic and cyclic fatigue loading in a grain-bridging silicon carbide ceramic
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab., CA (United States). Materials Sciences Div.
The mechanisms of cyclic fatigue-crack propagation in a grain-bridging ceramic, namely an in situ toughened, monolithic silicon carbide, is examined. The primary goal is to directly quantify the bridging stresses as a function of cyclic loading. To investigate the effect of the number of loading cycles on the strength of the wake bridging zone, crack-opening profiles of cracks grown at high velocity near the K{sub c} instability (to simulate behavior on the R-curve) and at low velocity near the fatigue threshold (to simulate the cyclically-loaded crack) were measured in situ in the scanning electron microscope at a fixed applied stress intensity. Differences between the measured profiles and those computed for elastic traction-free cracks permit the estimation of the traction distributions. These are then used to simulate resistance curve and fatigue-crack growth rate date. Predictions are found to be in close agreement with experimental measurements on disc-shaped compact-tension specimens. The results provide direct, quantitative evidence that bridging tractions are indeed progressively diminished due to cyclic loading during fatigue-crack propagation in a grain-bridging ceramic.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 616199
- Journal Information:
- Acta Materialia, Vol. 46, Issue 2; Other Information: PBD: 5 Jan 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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