Elastic plastic fracture mechanics investigation of toughness of wet colloidal particulate materials: Influence of saturation.

Abstract

HYPOTHESIS: Previous use of linear elastic fracture mechanics to estimate toughness of wet particulate materials underestimates the toughness because it does not account for plastic deformation as a dissipation mechanism. Plastic deformation is responsible for the majority of energy dissipated during the fracture of wet colloidal particulate materials. Plastic deformation around the crack tip increases with saturation of the particulate body. The toughness of the body increases with increasing saturation. EXPERIMENTS: Elastic plastic fracture mechanics using the J-integral approach was used for the first time to measure the fracture toughness (JIC) of wet micron sized alumina powder bodies a..