Material Science

Prof. Satish V. Kailas

Associate Professor
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore – 560012
India

Module-08
Failure
 Contents

1) Fracture, ductile and brittle fracture

2) Fracture mechanics
3) Impact fracture, ductile-to-brittle transition
4) Fatigue, crack initiation and propagation,
crack propagation rate
5) Creep, generalized creep behavior, stress and
temperature effects
 Failure – Classification
¾ Failure of a material component is the loss of ability to
function normally or to perform the intended job!

¾ Three general ways failure:

Excessive elastic deformation, E.g.: buckling. Controlled by
design and elastic modulus of the material.
Excessive plastic deformation, Controlled by yield strength
of the material. E.g.: loss of shape, creep and/ or stress-
rupture at elevated temperatures.
Fracture, involves complete disruption of continuity of a
component – under static load: brittle or ductile, under
fluctuating/cyclic load: fatigue, mode in which most
machine parts fail in service.
 Fracture
¾ Fracture defined as the separation or fragmentation of a
solid body into two or more parts under the action of stress.
¾ Fracture is classified based on several characteristic
features:

characteristic terms used

Strain to fracture Ductile Brittle
Crystallographic mode Shear Cleavage
Granular and
Appearance Fibrous and gray
bright
Along grain
Crack propagation Through grains
boundaries
 Fracture modes
¾ Ductile and Brittle are relative terms.
¾ Most of the fractures belong to one of the following modes:
(a) rupture, (b) cup-&-cone and (c) brittle.
 Ductile fracture Vs Brittle fracture
Parameter Ductile fracture Brittle fracture
Strain energy
Higher Lower
required
Stress, during
Increasing Constant
cracking
Crack propagation Slow Fast
Warning sign Plastic deformation None
Deformation Extensive Little
Necking Yes No
Fractured surface Rough and dull Smooth and bright
Most metals (not too Ceramics, Glasses,
Type of materials
cold) Ice
 Ductile fracture
¾ Ductile fracture in tension occurs after appreciable plastic
deformation.
¾ It is usually preceded by necking.
¾ It exhibits three stages - (1) formation of cavities (2) growth
of cavities (3) final failure involving rapid crack
propagation at about 45ْto the tensile axis.
¾ Fractography of ductile fracture reveals numerous spherical
dimples separated by thin walls on the fractured surface.
¾ McClintock’s strain to ductile fracture, εf,

(1 − n) ln(l 0 2b 0 )
εf =
[
sinh (1 − n) (σ a + σ b ) (2 σ 3) ]
 Ductile fracture (contd….)
¾ Stages of void nucleation, void growth, crack initiation and
eventual fracture under ductile fracture mode:
 Brittle fracture
¾ Brittle fracture intakes place with little or no preceding
plastic deformation.
¾ It occurs, often at unpredictable levels of stress, by rapid
crack propagation.
¾ Crack propagates nearly perpendicular to the direction of
applied tensile stress, and hence called cleavage fracture.
¾ Most often brittle fracture occurs through grains i.e.
transgranular.
¾ Three stages of brittle fracture - (1) plastic deformation that
causes dislocation pile-ups at obstacles, (2) micro-crack
nucleation as a result of build-up of shear stresses, (3)
eventual crack propagation under applied stress aided by
stored elastic energy.
 Brittle fracture – Griffith Theory
¾ Nominal fracture stress that causes brittle fracture in
presence of cracks (length of interior crack=2c), the stress
raisers, ⎛ Eγ ⎞
12

σf ≈⎜ ⎟
⎝ 4c ⎠

¾ Griffith’s criteria: a crack will propagate when the decrease

in elastic energy is at least equal to the energy required to
create the new crack surface. Thus for thin plates: ⎛ 2 Eγ ⎞1 2
σ =⎜ ⎟
⎛ 2 Eγ ⎞
12 ⎝ cπ ⎠
¾ For thick plates: σ = ⎜⎜ ⎟⎟
⎝ (1 − ν )cπ ⎠
2

¾ When plastic energy is also taken into account (Orowan’s

12 12
modification): ⎛ 2 E (γ + p ) ⎞ ⎛ Ep ⎞
σ =⎜ ⎟ ≈⎜ ⎟
⎝ cπ ⎠ ⎝ c ⎠
 Fracture mechanics
¾ Relatively new field of mechanics, that deals with
possibility whether a crack of given length in a material
with known toughness is dangerous at a given stress level or
not!
¾ Fracture resistance of a material in the presence of cracks,
known as fracture toughness, is expressed in two forms.
(1) Strain-energy release rate, G: G = πσ 2
c
E
(2) Stress concentration factor, K: K = ασ cπ

¾ Both parameters are related as:

For plane stress conditions i.e. thin plates: K 2 = GE
For plane strain conditions i.e. thick plates: K 2 = GE (1 − ν 2 )
 Fracture mechanics (contd….)
¾ K depends on many factors, the most influential of which
are temperature, strain rate, microstructure and orientation
of fracture. The value of K decreases with increasing strain
rate, grain size and/or decreasing temperature.
¾ Depending on the orientation of fracture, three modes of
fracture are identified as shown in the figure:
 Notch-impact testing
¾ Ductile and Brittle are terms used to distinguish two
extremes of fractures modes based on plastic deformation
involved before fracture occurs.
¾ Three factors that aid transition from ductile to brittle-
cleavage type of fracture are: (1) tri-axial state of stress (2)
low temperature, and (3) rapid rate of loading.
¾ Since brittle fracture is most unpredictable, its been extend
at a greater extent. Usually a notch will be introduced to
simulate the conditions.
¾ A notch increases the tendency for brittle fracture by four
means: (a) by producing high local stresses, (b) by
introducing a tri-axial state of stress, (c) by producing high
local strain hardening and cracking, and (d) by producing a
local magnification to the strain rate.
 Notch-impact testing (contd….)
¾ A material’s susceptibility to different kinds of fracture is
measured using notched specimen subjected to impact load.
Further study involves examining the fracture surfaces, and
calculation of ductility.
¾ Two kind of specimen configurations & loading directions:
 Ductile-to-Brittle transition
¾ Energy absorbed during the notch-impact is plotted as a
function of temperature to know at what temperature range
(DBTT) material fracture in a particular mode.

¾ In metals DBTT is around 0.1-0.2 Tm while in ceramics it is

about 0.5-0.7 Tm, where Tm represents absolute melting
temperature.
 Fatigue failure
¾ Failure that occurs under fluctuating/cyclic loads – Fatigue.
¾ Fatigue occurs at stresses that considerable smaller than
yield/tensile stress of the material.
¾ These failures are dangerous because they occur without
any warning. Typical machine components subjected to
fatigue are automobile crank-shaft, bridges, aircraft landing
gear, etc.
¾ Fatigue failures occur in both metallic and non-metallic
materials, and are responsible for a large number fraction of
identifiable service failures of metals.
¾ Fatigue fracture surface is perpendicular to the direction of
an applied stress.
 Fatigue failure (contd….)
¾ Fatigue failure can be recognized from the appearance of
the fracture surface:

¾ Any point with stress concentration such as sharp corner or

notch or metallurgical inclusion can act as point of initiation
of fatigue crack.
 Fatigue failure (contd….)
¾ Three basic requisites for occurrence of fatigue fracture are:
(a) a maximum tensile stress of sufficiently high value (b) a
large enough variation or fluctuation in the applied stress
and (c) a sufficiently large number of cycles of applied
stress.
¾ Stress cycles that can cause fatigue failure are characterized
using the following parameters:
Range of stress, σr = σmax – σmin
Alternating stress, σa = σr/2 = (σmax – σmin)/2
Mean stress, σm = (σmax + σmin)/2
Stress ratio, R= σmin / σmax
Amplitude ratio, A= σa / σm = (1-R) / (1+R)
 Fatigue testing – Data presentation
¾ Fatigue test, usually, involves applying fluctuating load
cyclically.
¾ A specimen of rotating beam type is often used because of
its simplicity.
¾ Fatigue data is usually presented by plotting maximum
stress (S) against number of cycles to fracture (N), using a
logarithmic scale for the latter variable.

S-N curve can be

represented by the
Basquin equation:
Nσ ap = C
 Fatigue parameters
¾ Material fails under fatigue mode at higher number of stress
cycles if stress applied is lower.
¾ After a limiting stress, ferrous materials won’t fail for any
number of stress cycles. This limiting stress is called –
fatigue limit / endurance limit.
¾ For non-ferrous materials, there is no particular limiting
stress i.e. as stress reduces, number of cycles to failure keep
increasing. Hence stress corresponding to 107 cycles is
considered as characteristic of material, and known as
fatigue strength. Number of cycles is called fatigue life.
¾ Endurance ratio – ratio of fatigue stress to tensile stress of a
material. For most materials it is in the range of 0.4-0.5.
Fatigue data presentation – Goodman diagram
¾ The Goodman diagram presents the dependence of
allowable stress ranges on mean stress for a material.
Allowable stress range increases with increasing
compressive mean stress i.e. compressive stress increases
the fatigue limit.
 Fatigue data presentation (contd….)
¾ An alternative method of presenting mean stress data is by
using Heig-Soderberg diagram. The following equation
summarizes the diagram: ⎡ ⎛σ ⎞x ⎤
σ a = σ e ⎢1 − ⎜⎜ m ⎟⎟ ⎥
⎢⎣ ⎝ σ u ⎠ ⎥⎦
x=1 for Goodman line, x=2 for the Gerber parabola.
 Fatigue – Crack initiation & propagation
¾ Fatigue failure consists of four stages: (a) crack initiation –
includes the early development of fatigue damage that can
be removed by suitable thermal anneal (b) slip-band crack
growth – involves the deepening of initial crack on planes of
high shear stress (stage-I crack growth) (c) crack growth on
planes of high tensile stress – involves growth of crack in
direction normal to maximum tensile stress (stage-II crack
growth) (d) final ductile failure – occurs when the crack
reaches a size so that the remaining cross-section cannot
support the applied load.
¾ Stage-I is secondary to stage-II crack growth in importance
because very low crack propagation rates involved during
the stage.
 Static load Vs Cyclic load

Feature Static load Cyclic load

Slip (nm) 1000 1-10

Extrusions &
Deformation feature Contour
Intrusions
Grains involved All grains Some grains
Vacancy
Less Very high
concentration
Necessity of
Required Not necessary
diffusion
Static load Vs Cyclic load (contd….)
Fatigue crack growth: Stage-I Vs Stage-II

Parameter Stage-I Stage-II

Stresses involved Shear Tensile

Crystallographic
Yes No
orientation
Crack propagation
Low (nm/cycle) High (μm/cycle)
rate
Multiple slip
Slip on Single slip plane
planes
Feature Feature less Striations
 Fatigue crack propagation rate
¾ Studies of fatigue crack propagation rate attained much
importance because it can be used as fail-safe design
consideration.
da
= fn(σ , a ) = Cσ am a n
dN

¾ Paris law:
da
= A(ΔK ) p
dN
p= 3 for steels, 3-4 for Al alloys
 Creep failure
¾ Deformation that occurs under constant load/stress and
elevated temperatures which is time-dependent is known as
creep.
¾ Creep deformation (constant stress) is possible at all
temperatures above absolute zero. However, it is extremely
sensitive to temperature.
¾ Hence, creep in usually considered important at elevated
temperatures (temperatures greater than 0.4 Tm, Tm is
absolute melting temperature).
¾ Creep test data is presented as a plot between time and
strain known as creep curve.
¾ The slope of the creep curve is designated as creep rate.
Creep curve
 Creep curve (contd….)
¾ Creep curve is considered to be consists of three portions.
¾ After initial rapid elongation, ε0, the creep rate decreases
continuously with time, and is known as primary or
transient creep.
¾ Primary creep is followed by secondary or steady-state or
viscous creep, which is characterized by constant creep rate.
This stage of creep is often the longest duration of the three
modes.
¾ Finally, a third stage of creep known as, tertiary creep
occurs that is characterized by increase in creep rate.
¾ Andrade creep equation:
ε = ε 0 (1 + β t )e
13 kt

¾ Garofalo creep equation:

ε = ε 0 + ε t (1 − e − rt ) + ε& s t
 Creep in different stages
¾ First stage creep is associated with strain hardening of the
sample.
¾ Constant creep rate during secondary creep is believed to be
due to balance between the competing processes of strain
hardening and recovery. Creep rate during the secondary
creep is called the minimum creep rate.
¾ Third stage creep occurs in constant load tests at high
stresses at high temperatures. This stage is greatly delayed
in constant stress tests. Tertiary creep is believed to occur
because of either reduction in cross-sectional area due to
necking or internal void formation. Third stage is often
associated with metallurgical changes such as coarsening of
precipitate particles, recrystallization, or diffusional changes
in the phases that are present.
 Creep rate – Stress & Temperature effects
¾ Two most important parameter that influence creep rate are:
stress and temperature.
¾ With increase in either stress or temperature (a)
instantaneous elastic strain increases (b) steady state creep
rate increases and (c) rupture lifetime decreases.

Qc
−
ε& s = K 2σ n e RT