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Fracture of Silicate Glasses: Ductile or Brittle?

Published

Author(s)

J -. Guin, Sheldon M. Wiederhorn

Abstract

Atomic force microscopy is used to investigate the possibility of crack tip cavitation during crack growth in silicate glasses. Matching areas on both surfaces of a crack were mapped and then compared for soda-lime silicate glass and for silica glass. For both glasses surfaces matched to better than 0.3 nm normal to the surface and 5 nm parallel to the surface. We could find no evidence for cavity formation in our study and suggest that completely brittle fracture occurs in glass.
Citation
Physical Review Letters

Keywords

atomic force microscopy, crack growth, fracture, glass

Citation

Guin, J. and Wiederhorn, S. (2008), Fracture of Silicate Glasses: Ductile or Brittle?, Physical Review Letters (Accessed April 19, 2024)
Created October 16, 2008