Sub-Critical Crack Growth and Fatigue Behaviour of Alkali Silicate Glass

Noah Weyrauch, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Abstract

Delayed failure in silicate glasses can be linked to subcritical crack growth (SCCG) where surface defects grow over time until catastrophic failure. This phenomenon originates from stress-enhanced chemical interactions between the environment (e.g. water) and the strained silicate bonds at the crack tip. SCCG must be accounted for to predict the long-term survivability of silicate-glass components. This study compares two methods to measure SCCG parameters for a commercial alkali silicate sealing glass and for a series of binary xNa2O-(1-x)SiO2 glasses, where 0.15