Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols. 13-14

Abstract: The introduction of advanced high strength steels, e.g., into the automotive industry initiated a huge interest in analyzing and understanding ductile fracture of sheet metals to greater details. This demands for the development of experimental methodologies that provide microvoid evolution parameters, which also serve as crucial input parameters for advanced forming simulation that can predict damage evolution. Therefore, this work scrutinizes the reliability and applicability of an increasingly popular damage characterization methodology, in which microindentation tests are carried out to measure hardness and elastic modulus degradation as a function of accumulated strain, relating this degradation to damage evolution. To accomplish this goal, this methodology is applied to several different sheet metals of different formability (an interstitial-free steel, a dual phase steel, an aluminum-magnesium-silicon alloy and a ferritic stainless steel). To analyze and verify the results of indentation based methodology, damage evolution in these metals is monitored also via different experimental techniques, i.e. scanning electron microscopy, micro-ct tomography and sensitive density measurement. Moreover, finite element simulations are carried out to understand the effect of void accumulation in the degradation of hardness and elastic modulus. In the case of using the hardness as a damage probe, the degradation due to damage is always coupled to other effects (strain hardening, grain shape change, texture development) causing an increase in the obtained hardness value for all of the sheet metals tested, thereby complete obscuring any degradation of the hardness due to damage. In the case of elastic modulus, all the sheet metals tend to pile-up upon indentation when they are severely deformed, leading to large systematic errors in the Oliver-Pharr methodology based modulus determination, whereas the elastic modulus is also intrinsically altered by the grain shape change and texture development seen for increasing deformation. Therefore, it can only be concluded that, contrary to the published results in the literature, neither the hardness degradation nor the elastic modulus degradation can be used as a precise probe for damage accumulation, at least when the indentation based methodology is carried out in the originally-proposed manner that is commonly used in the literature.

Abstract: By atomic force microscopy, the plastic deformation marks resulting from monotonic and cyclic plastic deformation were analysed to study the plasticity in each phase of Duplex Stainless Steels. In austenite, straight slip bands were observed after monotonic loading. These straight slip bands seem to serve as fatigue extrusion nucleation sites, which are the marks of the accommodation of the cyclic plasticity by the austenite. In ferrite, after monotonic loading, slip bands, could be classified into two different groups depending on whether they result from the bulk activities of ferrite or whether their formation is assisted by the plastic deformation of austenite. It was found that the crystallographic misorientation based on a Kurdjomov-Sachs relationship is the factor controlling one or the other type. After the first 5 loading cycles, the ferrite presents only monotonic plastic marks. This suggests no direct contribution of the ferrite to the accommodation of the cyclic plasticity.

Abstract: This work assesses the Crack Compliance Method (CCM), which has been extensively used for the experimental evaluation of residual stresses, by the Finite Element Method (FEM) to validate its experimental applicability through numerical evaluation. The CCM is a very powerful method that is based on Fracture Mechanics theory, but its experimental application and set up has not been totally scientifically validated. In this paper, a numerical evaluation is presented on the basic applications of the CCM. The assessment of the CCM is performed on bending beams with and without prior straining history. To determine the best position and orientation of the strain gages, as well as the optimum number of readings, a number of numerical simulations where also performed for the correct performance of the experimental evaluation of the CCM. The prior straining history condition, in the analyzed components, is induced by an axial pulling before the beam is bent. Three levels of preloading are considered: low, medium and high (which are related to the yield strain of the simulated material); Isotropic and Kinematic hardening rules are also considered. After the residual stress field is induced by bending, a slot cutting is simulated and the strain relaxation produced is captured, which is used later in the CCM program for the quantification of the original residual stress field. The results obtained in this work, provide a quantitative demonstration of the effect of hardening strain on the distribution of the residual stress in beams. In the same manner, the theoretical formulation of the CCM has been evaluated validating the application of this method for the determination of residual stress fields in mechanical components.

Abstract: This work analyses those size effects that are encountered first upon downscaling, including grain boundary effects, free surface effects, grain statistics effects. The separate influence of first-order effects was carefully investigated from uniaxial tensile tests on high-purity aluminum specimens with a well-defined microstructure of through-thickness grains, whereby the total number of grains in the cross-section was reduced towards a single grain in a cross-section by, first, decreasing the film thickness and, second, for specimens with through-thickness grains decreasing the specimen width. In addition, 3D dislocation-field strain gradient plasticity simulations were employed to analyze the intrinsic size effects, using the grain size and texture as measured experimentally. The work shows that for miniaturized structures with a limited number of columnar grains a unique Hall-Petch relation does not exist, even though a grain boundary effect, i.e. a decrease in stress level (at a given strain) for decreasing grain boundary area per unit volume, is clearly present. When the microstructure is kept constant upon miniaturization, the free surface per unit area increases causing the stress level of the structure to decrease, the effect of which increases towards a single grain in the cross-section. In addition, the work shows that grain statistics effects also contribute to observed weakening, due to insufficient compensation of local (weaker) material properties by the surrounding material (i.e. grains). Finally, grain statistics also significantly increase the statistical variation in mechanical properties for small-sized structures, an effect that is especially important for the reliability of miniature components. The separate influence of these first-order effects as well as their interplay are explained in terms of the movement of the dislocations upon plastic flow.

Abstract: The impact compressive failure behaviour of a unidirectional T700/2521 carbon/epoxy composite in three principal material directions is investigated in the conventional split Hopkinson pressure bar. Two different types of specimens with square cross sections are machined from the composite in the plane of the laminate. The uniaxial compressive stress-strain curves up to failure at quasi-static and intermediate strain rates are measured on an Instron testing machine. It is demonstrated that the ultimate compressive strength (or maximum stress) increases slightly, while the ultimate compressive strain (or failure strain) decreases marginally with strain rate in the range of 10-3 to 103/s in all three directions. Dominant failure mechanisms are found to significantly vary with strain rate and loading directions along three principal material axes.

Abstract: This study concentrates on the use of corners targets for photogrammetry in impact engineering. An example of high speed experimentation is presented and the associated difficulties are discussed. The relevant corner detection methods that have been implemented and developed are investigated and their accuracy assessed. This study focuses solely upon the effect of blurring on the accuracy of the detection methods; it is part of a much wider investigation into the use and accuracy of different targets and target detection methods for photogrammetry in impact engineering. A set of tests has been performed and the errors between the true position of the corner and the detected position are compared.

Abstract: The paper describes experimental tests carried out on three ring-stiffened circular conical shells that suffered plastic general instability under uniform external pressure. The cones were carefully machined from EN1A mild steel to a very high degree of precision. The end diameters of the cones, together with their thicknesses were the same, but the size of their ring stiffeners was different for each of the three vessels. In the general instability mode of collapse, the entire ring-shell combination buckles bodily in its flank. The paper also provides three design charts using the results obtained from these three vessels, together with the results obtained for twelve other vessels from other tests. All 15 vessels failed by general instability. One of these design charts was based on conical shell theory and two of the design charts were based on the general instability of ring-stiffened circular cylindrical shells, using Kendrick’s theory, which were made equivalent to ring-stiffened circular conical shells suffering from general instability under uniform external pressure. The design charts allowed the possibility of obtaining plastic knockdown factors, so that the theoretical elastic buckling pressures, for perfect vessels, could be divided by the appropriate plastic knockdown factor, to give the predicted buckling pressure. The theoretical work is based on the solutions of Kendrick, together with the finite element program of Ross, namely RCONEBUR and the commercial finite element package ANSYS. This method can also be used for the design of full-scale vessels.

Abstract: The material assumptions made to facilitate Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) are linear elasticity, material homogeneity and isotropy, and mechanical properties that are independent of temperature. The unusual shape memory and superelastic properties of near equiatomic NiTi alloys complicate the application of any experimental stress analysis technique, and in the case of TSA, make these assumptions invalid. This paper describes a detailed analysis conducted to characterise the material properties of NiTi shape memory alloys and to identify loading conditions suitable for quantitative stress analysis using TSA. The mechanical behaviour of the material in three distinct regions is considered and the suitability of each region for TSA is discussed. It is shown that the thermoelastic response is dependent on the mean stress when tested at room temperature in the pre-martensitic phase, due the presence of an intermediate R-phase. Theoretical calculations are used to confirm that this effect is related to the high temperature dependence of the material’s Young’s modulus.

Abstract: Deformation measurements with a thermocouple were applied in a deformation test of solder joints. The thermocouple is effectively combined with a conventional testing machine. The lead–solder and non–lead solder joints were pulled and sheared. The load-displacement and electromotive force (Emf)–displacement curves can be continuously derived from the signals of a load cell and the thermocouple. The Emfs in tension were compared with that in shear. The maximum Emf value in tension was larger than the emf value in shear, which meant in weakness of the solder joint in shear. Fracture occurred at the interface between the copper layer pad and solder, and the obtained Emf is closely related to fracture at the interface. The maximum Emf value in the non-lead solder was smaller than the Emf value in the lead–solder.

Abstract: To study the electrical behavior of nanoscale carbon fibers (NCF)/epoxy nanocomposites under mechanical load, NCF/epoxy materials were produced using different mechanical dispersion methods like pearl mill and three roll mill. Various preliminary mechanical tests with simultaneous resistance measurements have been conducted. The influence of the filler content, the dispersion quality and the filler geometry on the electrical properties of NCF/epoxy composites was investigated as a function of the mechanical loading. The strain sensitivity strongly depended on the filler content and the filler geometry. In cyclic loading tests at low strains the resistance showed a reversible and linear behaviour. At higher strains irreversible resistance changes were observed. In addition, the specific surface resistance corresponded even during unloading with the highest strain level applied so far. This indicates the potential of NCFs/epoxy nanocomposites to monitor the loading history of a sample.