Developing a Statistical Analysis Technique for Micro-Scratch Tests To Characterize the Fracture Toughness of Materials

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Characterizing the toughness of the microstructure of a material is today a truly research challenge which requires multidisciplinary competences in fracture mechanics, solid mechanics, and composite materials. New instruments have been emerging as powerful tools for characterizing materials at the microstructure scale and developing engineered materials, especially for nanotechnology. The successful application of such instruments depends on the availability of reliable techniques of analysis which allows estimating the sought properties from measured data. A micro-scracth allows measuring the energy needed to create a crack, which is related to the material toughness and - in turn - to the tensile strength of a brittle material. Unfortunately, there is no today a consolidated technique for analyzing the results of a micro-scratch test for different materials. Indeed, the current software of Anton-Paar micro-scratch tester does not allow analyzing the data for assessing the material toughness. This limitation limits the industrial use of micro-scratch tests to specialized analyzers. The scope of the project is to develop and validate an analysis technique for statistically characterizing the toughness of brittle materials, which is the key property for understanding the damage behaviour of a material. The objective of this research is twofold: (1) to extend an existing and recent method within a statistical framework; (2) to validate the developed approach on different brittle materials. The research will provide a new analysis technique for assessing the fracture energy of materials which are commonly employed in Canada. Canadian industry will employ those new powerful techniques in several industrial applications (e.g., glass anti-scratch, high strength concrete, rock properties for technical analysis, etc.) for which classical standard tests are difficult to perform.