Large-scale interfacial damage and residual stresses in a glass–ceramic matrix composite

The current work is concerned with the micro-mechanics of fracture of a SiC-fiber-reinforced barium osumilite (BMAS) ceramic matrix composite tested under both monotonic and cyclic tension. The double-edge notch (DEN) specimen configuration was employed in order to confine material damage within a predefined gage length. The imposition of successive loops of unloading to complete load relaxation and subsequent reloading were found to result in an increase by 20% in material strength as compared to pure tension; the finding is attributed to energy dissipation from large-scale interfacial debonding phenomena that dominated the post-elastic mechanical behavior of the composite. Cyclic loading also helped establish the axial residual stress state of the fibers in the composite, of tensile nature, via a well-defined common intersection point of unloading–reloading cycles. An approach consisting of the application of a translation vector in the stress–strain plane was successfully used to derive the residual stress-free properties of the composite and reconcile the scatter noted in elastic properties of specimens with respect to theoretical expectations.