Slow crack growth in polycarbonate films

Pierre-Philippe Cortet (1) , Stéphane Santucci (1) , Loïc Vanel (1) , Sergio Ciliberto (1)

1 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon

We study experimentally the slow growth of a single crack in polycarbonate films submitted to uniaxial and constant imposed stress. The specificity of fracture in polycarbonate films is the appearance of flame shaped macroscopic process zones at the tips of the crack. Supported by an experimental study of the mechanical properties of polycarbonate films, an analysis of the stress dependence of the mean ratio between the process zone and crack lengths, during the crack growth, show a quantitative agreement with the Dugdale-Barenblatt model of the plastic process zone. We find that the fracture growth curves obey strong scaling properties that lead to a well defined growth master curve.

Keywords: Fracture; Slow crack growth; Plasticity

Domains: Physics [physics]; Condensed Matter [cond-mat]; Materials Science [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; Physics [physics]; Mechanics [physics]; Mechanics of materials [physics.class-ph]

Pierre-Philippe Cortet, Stéphane Santucci, Loïc Vanel, Sergio Ciliberto. Slow crack growth in polycarbonate films. EPL - Europhysics Letters, 2005, 71 (2), pp.242. ⟨10.1209/epl/i2005-10077-3⟩. ⟨ensl-00156838⟩