A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of specimen dimensions in slow strain-rate environmental effects testing. Tension tests of free machining brass were conducted in a mercuric nitrate solution at a constant crosshead displacement rate of 10⁻³(inch/sec). Thirty-six smooth round bar specimens with different dimensions were tested. It was shown that percent elongation to failure was inversely proportional to an effective ratio of length to diameter, ((D - 2a)L / D²), where D is the specimen diameter, L is the length of the reduced cross section of the specimen, and a is the environmentally induced crack depth. This effective length to diameter ratio correlates with the applied tearing modulus for a cracked round bar tension specimen as defined by P. C. Paris and co-workers in 1979. The results verify that the tearing modulus may be used as a parameter to evaluate tearing instability in terms of elastic-plastic fracture mechanics. More directly, these results show a possible source of error in evaluating the degree of susceptibility to environmentally induced cracking in a material-environment interaction.

Master of Science