Abstract
A numerical model to study the fatigue crack retardation in a self-healing material (White et al., 2001, Nature, 409, pp. 794-797) is presented. The approach relies on a combination of cohesive modeling for fatigue crack propagation and a contact algorithm to enforce crack closure due to an artificial wedge in the wake of the crack. The healing kinetics of the self-healing material is captured by introducing along the fracture plane a state variable representing the evolving degree of cure of the healing agent. The atomic-scale processes during the cure of the healing agent are modeled using a coarse-grain molecular dynamics model specifically developed for this purpose. This approach yields the cure kinetics and the mechanical properties as a function of the degree of cure, information that is transmitted to the continuum-scale models. The incorporation of healing kinetics in the model enables us to study the competition between fatigue crack growth and crack retardation mechanisms in this new class of materials. A systematic study of the effect of different loading and healing parameters shows a good qualitative agreement between experimental observations and simulation results.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 595-602 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology |
Volume | 128 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2006 |
Keywords
- Artificial crack closure
- Coarse-grain molecular dynamics
- Cohesive finite element
- Contact
- Fatigue crack retardation
- Healing chemistry
- Polymeric materials
- Self-healing polymers
- Wedge
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Materials Science
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Mechanics of Materials
- Mechanical Engineering