96 research outputs found
Crack fronts and damage in glass at the nanometer scale
We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials
with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully
mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force microscopy
(AFM) techniques we tracked in real-time the crack tip propagation at the
nanometer scale on a wide velocity range (mm/s - pm/s and below). The influence
of the heterogeneities on this velocity is presented and discussed. Our
experiments reveal also -for the first time- that the crack progresses through
nucleation, growth and coalescence of nanometric damage cavities within the
amorphous phase. This may explain the large fluctuations observed in the crack
tip velocities for the smallest values. This behaviour is very similar to what
is involved, at the micrometric scale, in ductile fracture. The only difference
is very likely due to the related length scales (nanometric instead of
micrometric). Consequences of such a nano-ductile fracture mode observed at a
temperature far below the glass transition temperature in glass is finally
discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Journal of Physics: Condensed
Matter; Invited talk at Glass and Optical Materials Division Fall 2002
Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pa, US
Dynamic condensation of water at crack tips in fused silica glass
Water molecules play a fundamental role in the physics of slow crack
propagation in glasses. It is commonly understood that, during
stress-corrosion, water molecules that move in the crack cavity effectively
reduce the bond strength at the strained crack tip and, thus, support crack
propagation. Yet the details of the environmental condition at the crack tip in
moist air are not well determined. In a previous work, we reported direct
evidence of the presence of a 100 nm long liquid condensate at the crack tip in
fused silica glass during very slow crack propagation (10^-9 to 10^-10 m/s).
These observations are based on in-situ AFM phase imaging techniques applied on
DCDC glass specimens in controlled atmosphere. Here, we discuss the physical
origin of the AFM phase contrast between the liquid condensate and the glass
surface in relation to tip-sample adhesion induced by capillary bridges. We
then report new experimental data on the water condensation length increase
with relative humidity in the atmosphere. The measured condensation lengths
were much larger than what predicted using the Kelvin equation and expected
geometry of the crack tip.Comment: Accepted in JNCS. In pres
Numerical study of the temperature and porosity effects on the fracture propagation in a 2D network of elastic bonds
This article reports results concerning the fracture of a 2d triangular
lattice of atoms linked by springs. The lattice is submitted to controlled
strain tests and the influence of both porosity and temperature on failure is
investigated. The porosity is found on one hand to decrease the stiffness of
the material but on the other hand it increases the deformation sustained prior
to failure. Temperature is shown to control the ductility due to the presence
of cavities that grow and merge. The rough surfaces resulting from the
propagation of the crack exhibit self-affine properties with a roughness
exponent over a range of length scales which increases
with temperature. Large cavities also have rough walls which are found to be
fractal with a dimension, , which evolves with the distance from the crack
tip. For large distances, is found to be close to 1.5, and close to 1.0 for
cavities just before their coalescence with the main crack
Evidence and modeling of mechanoluminescence in a transparent glass particulate composite
International audienceMechanoluminescence (ML) of a transparent alkali-phosphate glass composite with SrAl2O4:Eu, Dy particles is reported. Uniaxial compression experiments show the linear dependence of the mechanoluminescence intensity with the mechanical power. A theoretical model, based on the physics of delayed processes (in analogy of viscoelasticity), is proposed. This model accurately predicts the ML intensity changes induced by a complex mechanical loading and provides a convincing description of the mechanoluminescence response
Direct observation of the displacement field and microcracking in a glass by means of X-ray tomography during in situ Vickers indentation experiment
International audienceThe actual displacement field in a glass during an in-situ Vickers indentation experiment was determined by means of X-ray tomography, thanks to the addition of 4 vol % of X-ray absorbing particles, which acted as a speckle to further proceed through digital volume correlation. This displacement was found to agree well with the occurrence of densification beneath the contact area. The intensity of the densification contribution (Blister field proposed by Yoffe) was characterized and provides evidence for the significant contribution of densification to the mechanical fields. Densification accounts for 27% of the volume of the imprint for the studied glass, that is expected to be less sensitive to densification than amorphous silica or window glass. A major consequence is that indentation cracking methods for the evaluation of the fracture toughness, when they are based on volume conservation, as in the case of Hill-Eshelby plastic inclusion theory, are not suitable to glass. The onset for the formation of the subsurface lateral crack was also detected. The corresponding stress is z 14 GPa and is in agreement with the intrinsic glass strength
Fracture of glassy materials as detected by real-time Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) experiments
We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials
with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully
mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force (AFM)
microscopy techniques we tracked in real-time the crack tip propagation at the
nanometer scale on a wide velocity range (1 mm/s and 0.1 nm/s and below). The
influence of the heterogeneities on this velocity is presented and discussed.
Our experiments revealed also -for the first time- that the crack advance
proceeds through nucleation, growth and coalescence of nanometric damage
cavities inside the amorphous phase, which generate large velocity
fluctuations. The implications of the existence of such a nano-ductile fracture
mode in glass are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Applied surface Scienc
Statistical Physics of Fracture Surfaces Morphology
Experiments on fracture surface morphologies offer increasing amounts of data
that can be analyzed using methods of statistical physics. One finds scaling
exponents associated with correlation and structure functions, indicating a
rich phenomenology of anomalous scaling. We argue that traditional models of
fracture fail to reproduce this rich phenomenology and new ideas and concepts
are called for. We present some recent models that introduce the effects of
deviations from homogeneous linear elasticity theory on the morphology of
fracture surfaces, succeeding to reproduce the multiscaling phenomenology at
least in 1+1 dimensions. For surfaces in 2+1 dimensions we introduce novel
methods of analysis based on projecting the data on the irreducible
representations of the SO(2) symmetry group. It appears that this approach
organizes effectively the rich scaling properties. We end up with the
proposition of new experiments in which the rotational symmetry is not broken,
such that the scaling properties should be particularly simple.Comment: A review paper submitted to J. Stat. Phy
Glass breaks like metals, but at the nanometer scale
We report in situ Atomic Force Microscopy experiments which reveal the
presence of nanoscale damage cavities ahead of a stress-corrosion crack tip in
glass. Their presence might explain the departure from linear elasticity
observed in the vicinity of a crack tip in glass. Such a ductile fracture
mechanism, widely observed in the case of metallic materials at the micrometer
scale, might be also at the origin of the striking similarity of the
morphologies of fracture surfaces of glass and metallic alloys at different
length scales.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett, few minor
corrections, Fig. 1b change
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