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 U6 - 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 -