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The concept of materials brittleness and its applications

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Abstract

Brittleness is a significant property considered in product design and the research and development of materials. However, for a long time the methods to determine brittleness have been largely “hand-waving” arguments or else circumferential properties—in other words describing numerous properties related to brittleness but not actually quantifying brittleness itself. We have defined brittleness of polymeric materials quantitatively with applications to multiple areas. Relationships between brittleness and both tribology and mechanics have been discovered and are described. Moreover, the definition has been applied in the development of multilayer composite materials; structural integrity of the composites decreases with increasing brittleness. Other applications and the fact that toughness is not an inverse of brittleness are also discussed.

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Acknowledgments

Discussions with: Michael Bratychak, Lvivska Politechnika National University; Zaneta Brocka, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; Valerio Causin, University of Padua; Georg Broza and Karl Schulte, Technical University of Hamburg; Kevin P. Menard, Perkin Elmer, Shelton, CT; and Tomasz Sterzynski, Poznan University of Technology, are all appreciated. A partial support of this project by the II-VI Foundation, Bridgeville, PA, is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Advanced Polymers & Optimized Materials (LAPOM), Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Department of Physics and Center for Advanced Research and Technology (CART), University of North Texas, 3940 North Elm Street, Denton, TX, 76207, USA

    Witold Brostow & Haley E. Hagg Lobland

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel

    Moshe Narkis

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  1. Witold Brostow
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  2. Haley E. Hagg Lobland
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  3. Moshe Narkis
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Correspondence to Witold Brostow.

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Brostow, W., Hagg Lobland, H.E. & Narkis, M. The concept of materials brittleness and its applications. Polym. Bull. 67, 1697–1707 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00289-011-0573-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00289-011-0573-1

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