Abstract
Abstract The behavioral characteristics of multiple cracks are important factors leading to material failures. However, to date, the fracturing and interactions of internal cracks have received minimal research due to the challenges in creating real internal cracks in brittle solids without incurring any damages to the surfaces. Therefore, this study investigated the fracturing processes and interactions between two parallel penny-shaped internal cracks under tensile stress conditions using both experimental and numerical simulation methods. Glass was used as the experimental material in this study. The results showed that the vertical spacing d between the two cracks was an important factor which affected both the crack interactions and the failure loads. When the d was small, attraction and coalescence occurred between the two cracks. However, when the d was large, the fracturing was observed to occur in the plane where one crack was located. A crack propagation arc appeared in all of the examined specimens. The loads of the crack initiation and the strength levels of the specimens were determined to be positively related to the crack spacing d. It was found that the larger the d was, the larger the crack initiation load and tensile strength values would be. In the present study, the crack paths in the numerical simulations based on the MTS criterion were determined to be consistent with the experiment results.
Highlights
The fracturing and growth of cracks are common problems in the field of engineering [1]
The stress distribution around the crack tip is not disturbed by the possible adjacent cracks, and its propagation path can be predicted artificially and accurately when the external boundary conditions are known
The interactions between multiple cracks are important factors leading to material failures [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Summary
The fracturing and growth of cracks are common problems in the field of engineering [1]. It is of major significance to carry out research regarding the fracturing processes and interactions of multiple cracks. Many researchers have performed investigations regarding the interactions and fracturing of multiple cracks. The previous experimental studies involving the interactions of internal cracks, such as those conducted by Zhu et al [20] and Fu [21], included uniaxial compression experiments on resin specimens with double internal cracks. These internal cracks were simulated by mica sheets embedded in the samples. It was indicated in this study that the simulation results were in accordance with the experimental results
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