A Comparative Study to Evaluate the Essential Work of Fracture to Measure the Fracture Toughness of Quasi-Brittle Material

Mohammed Y Abdellah; Abdul-Rahman Zuwawi; Sufyan A Azam; Mohamed K Hassan

doi:10.3390/ma15134514

A Comparative Study to Evaluate the Essential Work of Fracture to Measure the Fracture Toughness of Quasi-Brittle Material

Materials (Basel). 2022 Jun 27;15(13):4514. doi: 10.3390/ma15134514.

Authors

Mohammed Y Abdellah^{1

2}, Abdul-Rahman Zuwawi¹, Sufyan A Azam¹, Mohamed K Hassan^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Mechanical Engineering Department, College of Engineering and Islamic Architecture, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah 21955, Saudi Arabia.
² Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, South Valley University, Qena 83523, Egypt.
³ Production Engineering and Design Department, Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, Minia 61111, Egypt.

Abstract

In the present work, three different woven composite laminates were fabricated using the hand lay-up method. The woven reinforcement fibres were carbon fibres (CFRP), glass fibres (GFRP-W) and (GFRP-R) in combination with epoxy resin. Then, the central notch specimen tensile test (CNT) was used to measure the fracture toughness and the corresponding surface release energy (GIC). Then, the data were compared with the essential work of fracture (we) values based on the stored energy of the body to obtain a new standard fracture toughness test for composite laminates using relatively simple techniques. In addition to an extended finite element model, XFEM was implemented over a central notch specimen geometry to obtain a satisfactory validation of the essential work of fracture concepts. Therefore, the average values of (GIC) were measured with CNT specimens 25.15 kJ/m², 32.5 kJ/m² and 20.22 kJ/m² for CFRP, GFRP-W and GFRP-R, respectively. The data are very close as the percentage error for the surface release energy measured by the two methods was 0.83, 4.6 and 5.16 for carbon, glass and random fibre composite laminates, respectively. The data for the fracture toughness of XFEM are also very close. The percentage error is 4.6, 5.25 and 2.95 for carbon, glass and random fibre composite laminates, respectively. Therefore, the fundamental work of the fracture concept is highly recommended as a fracture toughness test for composite laminates or quasi-brittle Material.

Keywords: fracture; laminates; linear elastic; mode I; quasi-brittles.

Grants and funding

The authors would like to thank the Deanship of Scientific Research at Umm Al-Qura University for supporting this work. Grant code: 22UQU4361171DSR02.