On indentation and initiation of fracture in glass

The influence of indenter elasticity on Hertzian fracture initiation at frictional dissimilar elastic contact has been examined experimentally and numerically. In flat float glass specimens initiation of cone cracks has been observed and fracture loads measured with steel and tungsten carbide indenters at monotonically increasing loading and during a load cycle. The observed effect of indenter elasticity on fracture loads was found to be qualitatively different from the one predicted by the Hertz contact theory. This discrepancy may be explained by the presence of interfacial friction. The friction coefficient between the indenters and the specimen was measured and a contact cycle at finite Coulomb friction has been analyzed numerically. The influence of the indenter elasticity and the friction coefficient on the surface maximum tensile stress has been investigated and the results concerning the influence of these parameters on the fracture loads as given based on a critical stress fracture criterion. The obtained computational results were found to be in better agreement with experimental findings as compared to the predictions based on the frictionless contact theory. A remaining quantitative discrepancy was attributed to the well-known fact that a Hertzian macro-crack initiates from pre-existing defects on the specimen’s surface. In order to account for the influence of the random distribution of these defects a Weibull statistics was introduced. The predicted critical loads corresponding to the 50% failure probability were found to be in close agreement with experimentally observed ones.