An Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Near Tip Behavior in a Multi-Phase Material

In this paper, the local strain fields near the crack tip in a multi-phase material subjected to two different strain rates (0.05 min−1 and 0.25 min−1) at room temperature were analyzed, experiment-ally and numerically. Precracked specimens made from polybutadiene rubber embedded with hard particles were used in the crack propaga-tion tests. A grid method was used to obtain the strain fields near the crack tip and a nonlinear finite element computer code was used to determine the near tip strain fields. The results of analyses show that a good correlation exists between the experimental and the numerical results.