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

表征材料微观结构的韧性是当今一项真正的研究挑战，它 要求具备断裂力学、固体力学和复合材料方面的多学科能力。新的 仪器已成为表征材料微观结构和微观结构的有力工具 开发工程材料，特别是纳米技术。这些工具的成功应用 取决于可靠的分析技术的可用性，该技术允许估计所寻找的属性 从测量的数据。 微裂纹可以测量产生裂纹所需的能量，这与材料有关 韧性和--反过来--脆性材料的抗拉强度。不幸的是，今天没有一个 用于分析不同材料的微划痕试验结果的巩固技术。事实上， 目前的Anton-Paar微划痕仪软件不支持对材料进行数据分析 坚韧。这一限制将微划痕测试的工业应用限制在专门的分析仪上。的范围 该项目是开发和验证一种分析技术，用于统计表征材料的韧性 脆性材料，这是了解材料损伤行为的关键属性。 这项研究的目的有两个： (1)在统计框架内扩展现有和最新的方法； (2)对不同脆性材料的计算结果进行了验证。 这项研究将为评估材料的断裂能提供一种新的分析技术 通常在加拿大受雇。加拿大工业将在几个方面采用这些新的强大技术 工业应用(例如，玻璃防刮擦、高强度混凝土、用于技术分析的岩石特性、 等)传统的标准测试很难进行。

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.