摘要
Damage on surfaces often compromises the efficiency of some types of energy production, the safety and reliability of components, and ultimately increases costs. The environment can degrade the structural integrity of surfaces in service by the accumulation of large numbers of small destructive events, which based on the Central Limit Theorem leads to a Gaussian distribution of pit depth. In order to develop safety envelopes relating fracture loci with topological parameters of a brittle material, scatter plots were obtained and analyzed. Starting with an engineering surface, after 6 to 9 micrometers of average degradation depth, safety envelopes could be developed using average roughness and two other proposed parameters. Interestingly, maximum pit depth showed very low correlation with the location of fracture, at the early stage of degradation studied. This is attributed to relaxation of stress concentration at a given pit location due to the assuaging effect caused by neighboring pits. Additionally, energy at fracture was obtained, and a maximum relaxation region was observed. Analytical and experimental study of this region, as well as ductility effects are currently under research.
