TY - JOUR A1 - Schilling, Markus A1 - Niebergall, Ute A1 - Alig, I. A1 - Oehler, H. A1 - Lellinger, D. A1 - Meinel, Dietmar A1 - Böhning, Martin T1 - Crack propagation in PE-HD induced by environmental stress cracking (ESC) analyzed by several imaging techniques N2 - Different imaging techniques were employed to monitor Full Notch Creep Test (FNCT) experiments addressing environmental stress cracking in more detail. The FNCT is a well-established test method to assess slow crack growth and environmental stress cracking of polymer materials, especially polyethylene. The standard test procedure, as specified in ISO 16770, provides a simple comparative measure of the resistance to crack growth of a certain material based on the overall time to failure when loaded with a well-defined mechanical stress and immersed in a liquid medium promoting crack propagation. Destructive techniques which require a direct view on the free fracture surface, such as light microscopy and laser scanning microscopy, are compared to non-destructive techniques, i.e. scanning acoustic microscopy and xray micro computed tomography. All methods allow the determination of an effective crack length. Based on a series of FNCT specimens progressively damaged for varied Durations under standard test conditions, the estimation of crack propagation rates is also enabled. Despite systematic deviations related to the respective Imaging techniques, this nevertheless provides a valuable tool for the detailed evaluation of the FNCT and its further development. KW - Environmental stress cracking (ESC) KW - Slow crack growth (SCG) KW - Full notch creep test (FNCT) KW - X-ray computed tomography (CT) KW - Laser scanning microscopy (LSM) KW - Scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) PY - 2018 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymertesting.2018.08.014 SN - 0142-9418 SN - 1873-2348 VL - 70 SP - 544 EP - 555 PB - Elsevier AN - OPUS4-45766 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Schilling, Markus T1 - Failure of PE-HD induced by liquid media (ESC) N2 - As the well-known damage mechanisms slow crack growth (SCG) and environmental stress cracking (ESC) are the major causes for possible failure of polyolefin-based materials, especially for PE-HD, they are highly relevant and need to be considered thoroughly. Furthermore, due to slight but perceptible differences in damaging effect, a differentiation between SCG and ESC is expedient. SCG appears in “inert” or “neutral” media without a decisive influence of the surrounding medium whereas ESC occurs in “active” media, which influence the failure behavior and time to failure crucially. To characterize the inherent resistance of the material against those damage mechanisms, the well-established Full-Notch Creep Test (FNCT) is used. In this study, the FNCT – usually applied according to ISO 16770 [3] using a few universal model liquid media and mainly for pipe materials – is extended by investigations with appropriate parameters of selected relevant PE-HD container materials also in real media, such as the topical fuels diesel and biodiesel. The investigations were performed using a novel FNCT-device with 12 individual sub-stations, each equipped with individual electronic stress and temperature control and continuous online monitoring of the specimen elongation. Especially, mechanical stress and temperature were varied systematically during FNCT and time to failure values, time-dependent elongation data as well as detailed fracture surface analysis by laser scanning microscopy (LSM) were combined for the first time (Fig. 1). Particularly, the fracture surface analysis provides a sound basis to characterize failure behavior, mainly regarding the balance between brittle crack propagation and ductile deformation. Therefore, fracture surface analysis is an essential tool for a decent assessment of SCG and ESC by FNCT measurements. T2 - 17th International Conference on Deformation, Yield and Fracture of Polymers (DYFP) CY - Kerkrade, The Netherlands DA - 25.03.2018 KW - Environmental stress cracking (ESC) KW - PE-HD KW - Full Notch Creep Test (FNCT) KW - Imaging techniques KW - Brittle / ductile fracture behavior KW - Crack propagation analysis PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-44617 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -