Papers by Author: A. Chrysanthou

Abstract: Fatigue crack growth depends heavily on near tip stress-strain behavior controlled by many micromechanical and microstructural factors. Crack closure is widely used to rationalize crack growth behaviour under complex loading conditions. Reliable crack closure measurement is essential for enhanced damage tolerance design and remains a challenge to the industry. This paper focuses on the effect of plastic deformation ahead of a notch/crack on the non-linearity of compliance curves of 6082-T651 aluminium alloy specimens to highlight a potential issue in the conventional compliance curve based crack closure measurement technique. Experimental and numerical simulation results demonstrate that plastic deformation ahead of the notch will introduce non-linear stress-strain behavior in the absence of crack closure. It is proposed that the effect of crack tip plasticity on the non-linearity of the compliance curve be separated to obtain reliable crack closure measurement.

Abstract: Non-oxide ceramic nanostructured powders are synthesized through metastable transformation processing based on the Self-propagating High-temperature Synthesis (SHS) process followed by quenching. Binary systems like the investigated TiC–TiB2, when quenched from the liquid state give rise to metastable structures capable of being converted into a stable, fine-grained (nanocomposite) microstructure upon recrystallization by medium temperature treatments. A necessary condition is that the combustion temperature of the SHS reaction is higher than the eutectic temperature. A previous optimisation of the reaction stoichiometry was carried out to obtain SHS products with composition approximately equal to the eutectic (i.e. 67%mol TiC0,7 – 33%mol TiB2), according to the reaction: 6Ti + B4C + 1.8C → 4TiC0.7 + 2TiB2. In this work, different amounts of sodium borate (borax) were used in order to determine the optimum amount of additive to produce nanostructured TiC0.7–TiB2 composites. The morphological evolution of the powders after thermal treatment yielding re–crystallized structures demonstrates the metastability of the SHS–quench products. Therefore, the metastability process based on SHS– quench represents an extremely attractive route suitable for the achievement of nanocomposites.

Abstract: Self-piercing riveting as an alternative joining method to spot-welding has attracted considerable interest from the automotive industry and has been widely used in aluminium intensive vehicles. Pressing and stamping are important processes in automotive production and result in additional straining on the vehicle body sheet material. It is therefore important to have knowledge of the effect of sheet pre-straining on the quality of the self-piercing riveted joints and on the mechanical behaviour of the riveted aluminium alloy sheets. This paper reports the influence of sheet pre-straining on the static and fatigue behaviour of self-piercing riveted aluminium alloy sheet. Wrought aluminium alloy sheet, NG5754 with a nominal thickness value of 2mm was used to obtain pre-strained NG5754 sheets with pre-straining levels of 3%, 5% and 10%. The pre-strained NG5754 sheets were then joined in pair to create single riveted lap joints. Lap-shear and fatigue tests were performed on the self-piercing riveted joints. Microscopic inspection showed that the joint quality was satisfactory despite the increasing sheet straining levels. The results showed that by increasing the pre-straining level up to 10%, the shear and fatigue strength also increased. The rate of increase of the static and fatigue strength differed as the pre-straining levels varied.