Date of Completion

2024

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Thesis Type

Honors College

First Advisor

Dr. Linda Schadler

Keywords

Polymer fatigue, Tapered Double Cantilever Beam, Mold design

Abstract

To test the fatigue properties of a thermoplastic nano-composite polymer, a setup was constructed to account for the polymer being a thermoplastic rather than a thermoset. Similar fatigue research has been done with thermosetting nano-composite polymers. In this study, new molds were designed and manufactured to use for polymethylmethacrylate, a thermoplastic polymer. Additionally, a testing setup was designed and built to measure the growth rate of fatigue cracks in the polymer. The two new molds were used successfully to produce specimens of both Compact Tension and Tapered Double Cantilever Beam geometries. A camera setup was implemented and found to successfully record fatigue crack length. Using these new molds and the new crack propagation measurement system, it is now possible to test the fatigue properties of a thermoplastic or thermoplastic matrix nano-composite material.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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