Failure Behaviour of Reinforced Thermoplastic Polymers.

The critical conditions of the onset of fracture in variously reinforced thermoplastics are investigated. The determination of fracture toughness data provides informative results with respect to the influence of kind, shape, content and orientation of the reinforcement component on the fracture behavior of these materials. Further effects on the failure behavior due to differences in matrix toughness and fiber/matrix bond quality are discussed. The characterization of individual failure mechanisms is performed by the use of optical and scanning electron microscopic methods. An attempt is made to describe the fracture energies by the introduction of partial energy terms which belong to the individual failure mechanisms.