The fracture behavior of notched polycarbonate (PC) is investigated as a function of loading rate ranging from quasistatic to dynamic. Complementary numerical simulations are performed using the experimentally obtained load-point displacement as the input. The results indicated that in the rage of loading rates considered, the fracture initiation toughness of PC is not sensitive to loading rate. The fracture processes near the dynamically loaded notch-tip was observed using ultra-high speed imaging. In both quasi-static and dynamic loading, defects nucleate ahead of the notch tip and coalesce before final fracture. In quasi-static tests there is considerable time lag between defect nucleation and final fracture, whereas in dynamic experiments the two are almost synchronous.

Date Published: 4 March 2015
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9302, International Conference on Experimental Mechanics 2014, 930218 (4 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2081118

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9302:
International Conference on Experimental Mechanics 2014
Chenggen Quan; Kemao Qian; Anand Asundi; Fook Siong Chau, Editor(s)