FURI | Spring 2019

Behavior of Acrylic Plastic at Glass Transition Temperature: Thermal Gradient, Crack Speed

The motivation for research is to investigate material properties of plastic at its glass transition temperature at a crack process zone in order to study differences in crack speed and strain. To accomplish this, a heating component was created to add a thermal gradient to the sample, and DIC (digital image correlation) techniques were used to analyze test data. In the future, acrylic samples will be coated with aluminum and the electrical potential drop across the sample will be measured to estimate sample crack speed. The findings this research yields would contribute to development of materials that are more thermal resistant, stronger, and tougher.