Abstract
Linear elastic fracture modeling coupled with empirical material tensile data result in good quantitative agreement with the experimental determination of mode I fracture for both brittle and toughened epoxy nanocomposites. The nanocomposites are comprised of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A cured with Jeffamine D-230 and some were filled with core-shell rubber nanoparticles of varying concentrations. The quasi-static single-edge notched bending (SENB) test is modeled using both the surface-based cohesive zone (CZS) and extended finite element methods (XFEM) implemented in the Abaqus software. For each material considered, the critical load predicted by the simulated SENB test is used to calculate the mode I fracture toughness. Damage initiates in these models when nodes at the simulated crack tip attain the experimentally measured yield stress. Prediction of fracture processes using a generalized truncated linear traction–separation law (TSL) was significantly improved by considering the case of a linear softening function. There are no adjustable parameters in the XFEM model. The CZS model requires only optimization of the element displacement at the fracture parameter. Thus, these continuum methods describe these materials in mode I fracture with a minimum number of independent parameters.
Highlights
Material ensembles such as adhered layers, fiber-reinforced polymer composites (FRPCs), and multi-layer coatings serve a wide range of industries including: construction, military, transportation, and aerospace [1,2]
We assume that a linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM)-based approach is applicable for epoxy resins because the calculated size of their crack tip plastic zones was found to be small compared to common specimen dimensions and it is confined to a region close to the crack tip [2]
The XFEM and CZS methods were used to simulate the brittle mode I fracture of six epoxy nanocomposites that occurs during the quasi-static single-edge notched bending (SENB) test
Summary
Material ensembles such as adhered layers, fiber-reinforced polymer composites (FRPCs), and multi-layer coatings serve a wide range of industries including: construction, military, transportation, and aerospace [1,2]. In such industries, epoxy resins demonstrate remarkable utility due to their mechanical properties, chemical resistance, and sustainability. Epoxy resins are environmentally benign, a property that is attributed to curing processes that render a thermo-mechanically stable material. These curing processes yield potentially brittle materials, which is exemplified by the low strain-to-failure capacity of FRPCs [3,4]. To the best of our knowledge, these methods have not been applied to the materials considered in this study
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