New energy partitioning method in essential work of fracture (EWF) concept for 3-D printed pristine/recycled HDPE blends

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-10-2023

Abstract

This study explores a new energy partitioning approach to determine the fracture toughness of 3-D printed pristine/recycled high density polyethylene (HDPE) blends employing the essential work of fracture (EWF) concept. The traditional EWF approach conducts a uniaxial tensile test with double-edge notched tensile (DENT) specimens and measures the total energy defined by the area under a load-displacement curve until failure. The approach assumes that the entire total energy contributes to the fracture process only. This assumption is generally true for extruded polymers that fracture occurs in a material body. In contrast to the traditional extrusion manufacturing process, the current 3-D printing technique employs fused deposition modeling (FDM) that produces layer-by-layer structured specimens. This type of specimen tends to include separation energy even after the complete failure of specimens when the fracture test is conducted. The separation is not relevant to the fracture process, and the raw experimental data are likely to possess random variation or noise during fracture testing. Therefore, the current EWF approach may not be suitable for the fracture characterization of 3-D printed specimens. This paper proposed a new energy partitioning approach to exclude the irrelevant energy of the specimens caused by their intrinsic structural issues. The approach determined the energy partitioning location based on experimental data and observations. Results prove that the new approach provided more consistent results with a higher coefficient of correlation.

Journal Title

Geomechanics and Engineering

Journal ISSN

2005307X

Volume

33

Issue

1

First Page

11

Last Page

18

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.12989/gae.2023.33.1.011

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