Effect of triaxial stress distribution upon roughness of brittle fracture surface

Abstract

To observe the effect of stress triaxiality upon brittle fracture surface, we performed two types of experiments which differ in stress triaxiality. As a result, crack branch starting speed changes in two specimens and the speed was affected by stress triaxiality. In bending condition, branch starting speed is around 0.86 cr (cr: Rayleigh wave speed), which is higher than that in tensile condition, 0.59 cr. It was realized that in higher stress triaxiality, branching is easy to occur because in bending condition stress triaxiality is said to be lower. On the other hand, mirror-mist transition speed is not affected by stress triaxiality. By fracture surface observation, we proposed that branch occurs when microbranch grew. This proposition was supported by FEM calculation with microbranch model, it was proved that in bending condition microbranch is difficult to grow. Additionally, we proposed a qualitative explanation that microbranch is easy to grow when stress triaxiality is higher because growth of microbranch is affected by T-stress. It is since the phenomena is not on the main crack propagating plane.