scholarly journals Cracking During Nanoindentation and its Use in the Measurement of Fracture Toughness

1994 ◽  
Vol 356 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. S. Harding ◽  
W. C. Oliver ◽  
G. M. Pharr

AbstractResults of an investigation aimed at developing a technique by which the fracture toughness of a thin film or small volume can be determined in nanoindentation experiments are reported. The method is based on the radial cracking which occurs when brittle materials are deformed by a sharp indenter such as a Vickers or Berkovich diamond. In microindentation experiments, the lengths of radial cracks have been found to correlate reasonably well with fracture toughness, and a simple semi-empirical method has been developed to compute the toughness from the crack lengths. However, a problem is encountered in extending this method into the nanoindentation regime with the standard Berkovich indenter in that there are well defined loads, called cracking thresholds, below which indentation cracking does not occur in most brittle materials. We have recently found that the problems imposed by the cracking threshold can be largely overcome by using an indenter with the geometry of the corner of a cube. For the cube-corner indenter, cracking thresholds in most brittle materials are as small as 1 mN (∼ 0.1 grams). In addition, the simple, well-developed relationship between toughness and crack length used for the Vickers indenter in the microindentation regime can be used for the cube-corner indenter in the nanoindentation regime provided a different empirical constant is used.

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 1412-1419 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. Field ◽  
M. V. Swain ◽  
R. D. Dukino

The fracture toughness of small volumes of brittle materials may be investigated by using pyramidal indenters to initiate radial cracks. The length of these cracks, together with indenting load and the hardness to modulus ratio of the material, were combined to calculate the critical stress intensity factor Kc pertinent to fracture toughness. Modulus and hardness may be obtained from the literature or may be measured using nanoindentation techniques. If the material volume is very small, such as single grains in a conglomerate, a reduction of scale may be obtained by reducing the internal face angles of the indenter. This encourages crack initiation at lower loads, but cracks produced at very low loads are short and difficult to measure. Experiments on fused silica and glassy carbon suggested that radial cracks are initiated during loading and that when indenters with sufficiently small angles are used these cracks immediately pop-in, to become fully developed median/radial crack systems. Following pop-in, the rate of penetration of the indenter increases and at higher loads there is an extra increment of penetration over that which would otherwise have occurred. In this study a method is described whereby this extra penetration may be determined. Then for two dissimilar brittle materials, crack length is shown to be correlated with extra penetration leading to a relationship that may possibly avoid the necessity for crack-length measurement.


2006 ◽  
Vol 914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helene Brillet-Rouxel ◽  
Marc Verdier ◽  
Michel Dupeux ◽  
Muriel Braccini ◽  
Stéphane Orain

AbstractNanoindentation is the most convenient local technique for measuring elastic modulus, hardness, and fracture toughness of dielectric thin films. This approach is applied to bulk silicon and dielectric thin films (porous and non-porous) on silicon substrate. Reproducible stable cracks are generated from the edges of a cube corner indentor. The validity of theoretical model of use to estimate the toughness from cracks length has been checked on these reference cases. To calculate the toughness of thin film on Si substrate, we first established the loading range in which the cracks only affect the thin film without substrate damage. Several corrective terms have been introduced to the classical toughness estimation formula to take into account the proximity of the film/substrate interface and the residual stress pre-existing in the film. This approach is discussed by comparing experimental results obtained including these improvements to literature results.


Author(s):  
Gyeung Ho Kim ◽  
Mehmet Sarikaya ◽  
D. L. Milius ◽  
I. A. Aksay

Cermets are designed to optimize the mechanical properties of ceramics (hard and strong component) and metals (ductile and tough component) into one system. However, the processing of such systems is a problem in obtaining fully dense composite without deleterious reaction products. In the lightweight (2.65 g/cc) B4C-Al cermet, many of the processing problems have been circumvented. It is now possible to process fully dense B4C-Al cermet with tailored microstructures and achieve unique combination of mechanical properties (fracture strength of over 600 MPa and fracture toughness of 12 MPa-m1/2). In this paper, microstructure and fractography of B4C-Al cermets, tested under dynamic and static loading conditions, are described.The cermet is prepared by infiltration of Al at 1150°C into partially sintered B4C compact under vacuum to full density. Fracture surface replicas were prepared by using cellulose acetate and thin-film carbon deposition. Samples were observed with a Philips 3000 at 100 kV.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Lucas ◽  
George Barnes

We present the results of direct dynamics simulations and DFT calculations aimed at elucidating the effect of \textit{O}-sulfonation on the collision induced dissociation for serine. Towards this end, direct dynamics simulations of both serine and sulfoserine were performed at multiple collision energies and theoretical mass spectra obtained. Comparisons to experimental results are favorable for both systems. Peaks related to the sulfo group are identified and the reaction dynamics explored. In particular, three significant peaks (m\z 106, 88, and 81) seen in the theoretical mass spectrum directly related to the sulfo group are analyzed as well as major peaks shared by both systems. Our analysis shows that the m\z 106 peaks result from intramolecular rearrangements, intermolecular proton transfer among complexes composed of initial fragmentation products, and at high energy side-chain fragmentation. The \mz 88 peak was found to contain multiple constitutional isomers, including a previously unconsidered, low energy structure. It was also seen that the RM1 semi empirical method was not able to obtain all of the major peaks seen in experiment for sulfoserine. In contrast, PM6 did obtain all major experimental peaks.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chem Int

The full conformational space of N-formyl-L-alanine-amide was explored by the semi-empirical method AM1 coupled to the Multi Niche Crowding (MNC) genetic algorithm implemented in a package of programs developed in our laboratory. The structural and energy analysis of the resulting conformational space E(,ψ) exhibits 5 regions or minima ɣL, ɣD, ɛL, D and αD. The technique provides better detection of local and global minima within a reasonable time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 465
Author(s):  
Angelos Ikonomakis ◽  
Ulrik Dam Nielsen ◽  
Klaus Kähler Holst ◽  
Jesper Dietz ◽  
Roberto Galeazzi

This paper examines the statistical properties and the quality of the speed through water (STW) measurement based on data extracted from almost 200 container ships of Maersk Line’s fleet for 3 years of operation. The analysis uses high-frequency sensor data along with additional data sources derived from external providers. The interest of the study has its background in the accuracy of STW measurement as the most important parameter in the assessment of a ship’s performance analysis. The paper contains a thorough analysis of the measurements assumed to be related with the STW error, along with a descriptive decomposition of the main variables by sea region including sea state, vessel class, vessel IMO number and manufacturer of the speed-log installed in each ship. The paper suggests a semi-empirical method using a threshold to identify potential error in a ship’s STW measurement. The study revealed that the sea region is the most influential factor for the STW accuracy and that 26% of the ships of the dataset’s fleet warrant further investigation.


Metals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Qiaoling Chu ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Tuo Xia ◽  
Peng Cheng ◽  
Jianming Zheng ◽  
...  

The relation between the microstructure and mechanical properties of the Fe–Nb dissimilar joint were investigated using nanoindentation. The weld metal consists mainly of Fe2Nb, α-Fe + Fe2Nb, Nb (s,s) and Fe7Nb6 phases. Radial cracks initiate from the corners of the impressions on the Fe2Nb phase (~20.5 GPa) when subjected to a peak load of 300 mN, whereas the fine lamellar structures (α-Fe + Fe2Nb) with an average hardness of 6.5 GPa are free from cracks. The calculated fracture toughness of the Fe2Nb intermetallics is 1.41 ± 0.53 MPam1/2. A simplified scenario of weld formation together with the thermal cycle is proposed to elaborate the way local phase determined the mechanical properties.


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