Experimental and numerical survey on tensile fracture of polycrystalline graphite using design of experiments

Abstract

A new test specimen for a tensile test of industrial graphite is introduced using experiment and finite element results. The most influencing factors on the tensile strength of the test specimens are considered and the number of tests, which are necessary to optimize the tensile strengths are reduced based on the design of experiment using the Taguchi method and the effects of all factors on strength of test samples are studied. Comparison of the predicted strengths based on the Taguchi approach with the measured experimental results and finite element analysis shows a good correlation between them. In addition, results show that the new introduced specimen makes a 33% increase in the probability of fracture of the test specimens in gage length and the measured tensile strengths are 20% higher than those measured using the standard of the American Society for Testing and Materials.