Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Effect of crack blunting on the ductile-brittle response of crystalline materials

Conference ·
OSTI ID:364048
 [1]; ;  [2]
  1. GE Research and Development Center, Niskayuna, NY (United States). Physical Metallurgy Lab.
  2. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States). Dept. of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering

The authors propose a self-consistent criterion for crack propagation versus dislocation emission, taking into account the effects of crack-tip blunting. Continuum concepts are used to evaluate the evolving competition between crack advance and dislocation nucleation as a function of crack-tip curvature. This framework is used to classify crystals as intrinsically ductile or brittle in terms of the unstable stacking energy, the surface energy, and the peak cohesive stresses achieved during opening and shear of the atomic planes. The authors find that ductile-brittle criteria based on the assumption that the crack is ideally sharp capture only two of the four possible fracture regimes. One implication of the present analysis is that a crack may initially emit dislocations, only to reinitiate cleavage upon reaching a sufficiently blunted crack-tip geometry.

OSTI ID:
364048
Report Number(s):
CONF-981104--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Effect of crack blunting on subsequent crack propagation
Book · Mon Dec 30 23:00:00 EST 1996 · OSTI ID:488969

Effect of crack blunting on subsequent crack propagation
Conference · Sat Nov 30 23:00:00 EST 1996 · OSTI ID:400608

The in-situ TEM observation of microcrack nucleation in titanium aluminide
Journal Article · Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 1994 · Scripta Metallurgica et Materialia; (United States) · OSTI ID:7086773