Self-Sustained Fracture Waves in Soda-Lime Glass

High-speed framing photography in conjunction with circularly polarised light has been employed to monitor qualitatively the state of residual stress in Prince Rupert’s drops of soda-lime glass undergoing disintegration by a self-sustained fracture wave in the glass drops. It is revealed that the fracture wave through a Prince Rupert’s drop is driven by the residual stress in the drop, with the propagation speed of the fracture wave being (1700 ± 100) ms-1, which is close to the terminal speed of individual cracks in the soda-lime glass, but is much smaller than the longitudinal wave speed of 5300 ms-1 in the glass. These observations support our recently reported observations and also give support to our conclusions that the fracture wave speed of a self-sustained fracture wave is equal to the terminal speed of individual cracks in the glass. Some preliminary observations from fracture waves in Prince Rupert’s drops of a lead oxide glass are also described, which show that in Prince Rupert’s drops of the lead oxide glass the fracture wave is also self-sustained and it travels through the drop at a steady and stable speed of (1300 ± 100) ms-1, which is also considerably smaller than the longitudinal wave speed of 4800 ms-1 in the lead glass. A brief comment is also made on the fracture waves observed by other workers in brittle oxide glasses and solids generated by plate impacts and shock waves.

The Bending Strength of Brittle Materials and the Characteristics of the Elastic Wave Signal by Vickers Indentation

Four kinds of brittle materials were used to evaluate the bending strength under three-point bending and the characteristics of the elastic wave signal by Vickers indentation. The bending test was carried out under room temperature and high temperature. A crack was made at the tension side of the specimen with a Vickers indenter to investigate fracture strength. Fracture wave detector was used to evaluate characteristics of waveform and frequency of the elastic wave signal.