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Self-Affinity Analysis of the Fracture Surfaces of Polypropylene and Opal Glass.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
Abstract
In this work we report the self-affinity analysis of the fracture surfaces of a polymeric semicrystalline material and an opal glass. In the case of the plastic material, samples of isotactic polypropylene (i-PP) were prepared by varying the cooling rate from the melt; this resulted in different spherulite sizes. Samples were then broken in bend test after being immersed in liquid nitrogen. In the case of the opal glass, samples with different sizes of the opacifying particles, obtained by different thermal treatments, were broken in a punch test. In both cases the fracture surfaces were analyzed by both Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) in the contact mode. Self-affinity analysis was performed by the variable bandwidth method, covering a range of length scales spanning from a few nanometers up to ten micrometers. The roughness exponents are found to be of similar values close to ζ = 0.8 with the correlation length corresponding to the size of the spherulites in the plastic material and to the size of the opacifying particles in the opal glass. These results should be taken into account in the development of multiscale models and simulations of the fracture process of real heterogeneous materials.
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- Copyright © Materials Research Society 2001