Failure Mechanisms of Particulate Two-Phase Composites

Hard and brittle inclusions embedded in a ductile matrix failure can be attributed to particle cleavage followed by ductile crack growth in the matrix, these mechanisms are significantly sensitive towards the presence of residual stresses. The stress distribution, which greatly affects the particle failure, inside the inclusion and the absolute size of each particle plays is taken into account using the Weibull theory. Unit cells containing a number of quasi-randomly oriented elliptical inclusions serve as the basis for the finite element calculations. The fracture probability is evaluated for a large number of inclusions and plotted versus the particle size.