Experiments on crack propagation in a viscoelastic material

Abstract

The problem of plane stress crack growth in a rectangular linearly viscoelastic plate under a pair of equal and opposite forces applied to the crack surface is studied experimentally. A fatigue crack is generated at the end of a slot cut on the specimen. After application of two opposite forces to the specimen with a fatigue crack, the crack grows gradually. It is found that under sufficiently small load, the speed of crack growth decreases as time increases, and crack arrest occurs finally. However when the applied load is sufficiently large, the crack grows with increasing speed until a catastrophic failure of the specimen takes place. Between these two extreme cases, the crack grows with an oscillatory speed. A theory based on the models of an infinite plate and double cantilevers is proposed for the explanation of the behaviour of crack growth under various loads. Our experimental results check fairly well with theoretical predictions.