COMPUTATIONAL MODELLING OF DEFECTS IN BRITTLE MATERIALS

Abstract

Advanced brittle materials such as ceramics have found increasing applications in metallurgy, in heat engine systems and in the aerospace industries. However, the use of these materials is limited by their undesirable brittle characteristics. It is thus the primary objective of the present work to study the fracture behaviour of these materials-in particular, the interaction effect due to defects. In the present study, a versatile and computationally efficient numerical method is developed to analyze the interaction effect between cracks and microcracks, flat inclusions or circular inclusion. The method of analysis is based on a singular integral technique using distributions of edge dislocations to represent the cracks and flat inclusions. The stress intensity factors of the cracks are presented for a variety of configurations. Numerical results for some cases are compared with available data in the literature and are found to be very accurate. It is believed that the outcome of the present work will be useful in material design and prediction of failure due to fracture.