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Fracture toughness of nanocrystalline metal matrix composites reinforced by aligned carbon nanotubes

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Abstract

Experimental observations have shown that carbon nanotubes (CNTs)/Al nanocomposites with high level ordered nanolaminates exhibit greatly improved plasticity. The increased plasticity is mainly attributed to enhanced dislocation storage capability and two-dimensional alignment of the reinforcement. Here a theoretical model is proposed with interactions between aligned CNTs and grain boundary dislocations emitted from a crack tip taken into consideration to investigate crack blunting and fracture toughness in nanocrytalline metal matrix composites (MMCs). The critical shear stress for emission of first dislocation from intersections between a long, flat crack and aligned CNTs is quantitatively characterized. The final equilibrium positions and maximum numbers of emitted dislocations for different orientation angles and microstructures of aligned reinforcement are evaluated. In addition, the dependence of enhanced fracture toughness on effective gliding distance of emitted dislocations is also determined. The results show that the existence of aligned CNTs can lead to an increase of critical crack intensity factor by 77% than that in dislocation free case under certain conditions. The model may provide a basis understanding of ductility in aligned CNTs-reinforced nanocrystalline MMCs on respective of emission and motion of dislocations.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by Key Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (211061), National Natural Science Foundation of China (10502025, 10872087, 11272143), Program for Chinese New Century Excellent Talents in university (NCET-12-0712), Ph.D. Programs Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (20133221110008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, 214122, China

    Shuhong Dong

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, 210009, China

    Shuhong Dong & Jianqiu Zhou

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, 430070, China

    Jianqiu Zhou

  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70148, USA

    David Hui

  5. National Technology Research Center on Pressure Vessel and Pipeline Safety Engineering, Hefei General Machinery Research Institute, Hefei, Anhui Province, 230031, China

    Lu Wang

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  1. Shuhong Dong
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  2. Jianqiu Zhou
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Correspondence to Jianqiu Zhou.

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Dong, S., Zhou, J., Hui, D. et al. Fracture toughness of nanocrystalline metal matrix composites reinforced by aligned carbon nanotubes. Journal of Materials Research 30, 3267–3276 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2015.294

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