Fracture behaviour of functionally graded materials

Functionally graded materials (FGMs) are special composites consisting of two constituent phases whose composition change continuously along one direction. The gradual transition in material properties alleviates thermal mismatch problems experienced by cladded and coated components. The microstructure of FGM is usually heterogenous and the dominant failure mode of FGM is the crack initiation and propagation from the inclusions. Hence, the knowledge of crack growth and propagation is important in designing components involving FGM.; The interface crack problem is studied by examining the asymptotic behavior of stress and displacement fields around the crack in FGM, and by comparing the results with known solutions for bimaterial systems. The, focus is on characterizing the influence of material nonhomogeneity on the fracture parameters, and determining the fracture strength of FGM under quasi-static and dynamic loading.; The numerical and experimental techniques developed in this study are unified for both bimaterial and FGM, permitting direct comparison of fracture parameters and test results obtained for different material types. A crack opening displacement (COD) extrapolation technique is developed for the numerical computation of the fracture parameters from finite element analysis, and a new strain gage technique is devised for complex SIF measurement in both bimaterial and FGM. A simple and highly repeatable FGM manufacturing process has been established, and the continuous variation of material properties is evaluated using a novel technique involving ultrasonic wave velocity and local contact stiffness measurements.; The nature of singular field around the crack in FGM is studied by varying material gradient, the position of the crack in the graded region and the crack length. The various fracture parameters are compared with that computed for homogenous and bimaterial counterparts. The numerical results show that the crack in FGM, regardless of the position in the graded zone, approaches the bimaterial crack behavior as the material gradient is increased. The mode-mixity is shown to be strongly dependent on the material gradient.; Static and dynamic fracture tests are conducted on precracked specimens fabricated from homogenous, bimaterial and FGM. In the dynamic fracture study, complimentary finite element simulations are performed using the measured interaction forces as the traction boundary conditions. The measured dynamic strains and complex SIF data match favorably with the numerical results. The fracture test results show that, by joining two dissimilar materials with a graded zone, the strength of the resulting system has, at the minimum, the strength of the corresponding bimaterial.