Understanding Effect of Grain Boundaries in the Fracture Behavior of Polycrystalline Tungsten under Mode-I Loading

Abstract

Polycrystalline tungsten is considered as an important material in aerospace, automobile, and energy industries due to its excellent thermal and mechanical properties. While grain boundaries (GBs) are perceived to play a major role in polycrystalline tungsten failure resistance, experimental data are scarce on explicit contribution of GBs to tungsten failure resistance. The present work focuses on understanding the effect of GB property variation on fracture resistance of polycrystalline tungsten. The cohesive finite element method is used for the simulation of crack propagation in polycrystalline tungsten microstructures. The results show a significant effect of GB property variation on change of crack propagation patterns during tungsten fracture. A variation of 10% in GB fracture energy resulted in distinctly different crack patterns with different primary crack propagation direction and the microcrack density. Based on the observed microstructural fracture attributes, a relation between cohesive energy dissipation and microcrack density in polycrystalline tungsten microstructures is proposed.