Fracture Toughness

Nikhil Gupta, Dinesh Pinisetty, Vasanth Chakravarthy Shunmugasamy

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Studies on plain syntactic foams have revealed that the fracture toughness and specific fracture toughness are found to be maximum around 30 vol. % of hollow particles. At low hollow particle volume, fraction stiffening effect and crack bowing failure mechanism was observed whereas at high volume fraction, hollow filler particle-matrix debonding is found to the dominant failure mechanism. Fracture toughness studies on reinforced syntactic foams have been performed only at a constant hollow particle volume fraction of 30 vol. %. A study on phenolic hollow particle filled syntactic foams concluded that fracture toughness increased with increasing fibers content. A maximum increase of 95 % was observed with respect to plain syntactic foam for 10 mm length fiber at 3 wt%. Carbon fibers were found to have a significantly stronger effect on the fracture toughness than glass fibers. PEEKMOH toughened epoxy matrix syntactic foams were found to have up to a 46 % improvement in fracture toughness with the addition of 5 wt% nanoclay. An increase of 37 % in fracture toughness is observed for the addition of 1.5 vol. % of carbon nanofibers in comparison to plain syntactic foams. It was also observed that microscale reinforcement (short carbon fibers) was more effective than nanoscale reinforcement (nanoclay), at similar weight fractions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSpringerBriefs in Materials
PublisherSpringer
Pages59-62
Number of pages4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013

Publication series

NameSpringerBriefs in Materials
ISSN (Print)2192-1091
ISSN (Electronic)2192-1105

Keywords

  • Carbon fiber
  • Carbon nanotube
  • Density-fracture toughness relation
  • Fracture toughness
  • Glass fiber
  • Hollow particle
  • Nanoclay
  • Nanoscale reinforcement
  • Syntactic foam

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biomaterials
  • Metals and Alloys
  • Engineering (miscellaneous)
  • Chemistry (miscellaneous)

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