Eric Martin

Crack initiation in brittle materials upon spherical indentation is associated with the tensile radial stresses during loading. However, location of crack onset often differs (offset) from the site of maximal stress. In addition, experiments reveal a strong dependency of crack initiation forces on geometrical parameters as well as the surface condition of the sample. In this work, a coupled stress–energy fracture criterion is introduced to describe the initiation of ring cracks in brittle materials, which takes into account the geometry of the contact and the inherent strength and fracture toughness of the material. Several experiments reported in literature are evaluated and compared. The criterion can explain the location offset of the ring crack upon loading, as observed in various ceramics and glasses. It also predicts the ring crack initiation force upon contact loading, provided that surface compressive stresses, introduced during grinding or polishing processes, are taken into account. Furthermore, the stress–energy criterion may be employed to estimate the surface residual stress of ceramic parts, based on simple contact damage experiments.

A high-temperature multi-axial test is carried out to characterize the thermo-mechanical behaviour of a 3D-woven SiC/SiC composite aeronautical part under loads representative of operating conditions. The sample is L-shaped and cut out from the part. It is subjected to severe thermal gradients and a superimposed mechanical load that progressively increases up to the first damage. The sample shape and its associated microstructure, the heterogeneity of the stress field and the limited accessibility to regions susceptible to damage require non-contact imaging modalities. An in situ experiment, conducted with a dedicated testing machine at the SOLEIL synchrotron facility, provides the sample microstructure from computed micro-tomographic imaging and thermal loads from infrared thermography. Experimental constraints lead to non-ideal acquisition conditions for both measurement modalities. This article details the procedure of correcting artefacts to use the volumes for quantitative exploitation (i.e. full-field measurement, model validation and identification). After proper processing, despite its complexity, the in situ experiment provides high-quality data about a part under realistic operating conditions. The influence of the mesostructure on fracture phenomena can be inferred from the tomography in the damaged state. Experiments show that the localization of damage initiation is driven by the geometry, while the woven structure moderates the crack propagation. This study widens the scope of in situ thermo-mechanical experiments to more complex loading states, closer to in-service conditions.

In this paper, a procedure to obtain fully uncoupled multi-directional stacking sequences for delamination specimens is outlined. For such sequences, in-plane, membrane-bending and torsion–bending coupling terms are null (in closed-form solution in the framework of classical laminated plate theory) for the entire stack and for both its halves, which form two arms in the pre-cracked region of a typical delamination specimen. This is achieved exploiting the superposition of quasi-trivial quasi-homogeneous stacking sequences, according to appropriate rules. Any pair of orientations of the plies embedding the delamination plane can be obtained. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a fully uncoupled multi-directional sequence is designed and compared to other relevant sequences proposed in the literature. Finite element simulations of double cantilever beam test are performed using classic virtual crack closure technique and a revised state-of-the-art virtual crack closure technique formulation too. Some interesting conclusions regarding proper design of multidirectional stacks for delamination tests are drawn. Moreover, the results confirm the suitability of fully uncoupled multi-directional sequences for delamination tests. Thanks to their properties, these sequences might lay the foundations for the development of standard test procedures for delamination in angle-ply interfaces.