Antony, SJ orcid.org/0000-0003-1761-6306, Okeke, G, Tokgoz, DD et al. (1 more author) (2017) Photonics and fracture toughness of heterogeneous composite materials. Scientific Reports, 7. 4539. ISSN 2045-2322
Abstract
Fracture toughness measures the resistance of a material to fracture. This fundamental property is used in diverse engineering designs including mechanical, civil, materials, electronics and chemical engineering applications. In spite of the advancements made in the past 40 years, the evaluation of this remains challenging for extremely heterogeneous materials such as composite concretes. By taking advantage of the optical properties of a thin birefringent coating on the surface of opaque, notched composite concrete beams, here we sense the evolution of the maximum shear stress distribution on the beams under loading. The location of the maximum deviator stress is tracked ahead of the crack tip on the experimental concrete samples under the ultimate load, and hence the effective crack length is characterised. Using this, the fracture toughness of a number of heterogeneous composite beams is evaluated and the results compare favourably well with other conventional methods using combined experimental and numerical/analytical approaches. Finally a new model, correlating the optically measured shear stress concentration factor and flexural strength with the fracture toughness of concretes is proposed. The current photonics-based study could be vital in evaluating the fracture toughness of even opaque and complex heterogeneous materials more effectively in future.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2017, The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Fracture toughness; Photonics; Waste processing; Multi-scale mechanics |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemical & Process Engineering (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Qatar National Research Fund NPRP-6-1010-2-413 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 23 May 2017 10:40 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2023 22:29 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41598-017-04782-7 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:116760 |