Abstract
The effect of thickness on the fracture behaviour of a high-impact polystyrene containing approximately 7% rubber is studied. For thicknesses below 10 mm plane stress ductile tearing occurs and deep edge notched tension specimens are used to obtain the specific essential work of fracture (we) in plane strain. Mixed mode plane strain-plane stress fracture is predominant in single-edge notched tension specimens with thicknesses above 10 mm. By assuming that the plane stress layers are given by the overall fracture toughness (Kc) a modified bimodal fracture analysis based on linear elastic fracture mechanics concepts is presented to analyse the experimental results. The plane strain fracture toughnessGc1 (=Kc12/E) is in good agreement withwe. It is shown thatKc1 for HIPS is larger than that of the polystyrene matrix alone due to the toughening effect of the rubber at the crack tip vicinity.
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