CHARACTERIZATION OF SLOW CRACK GROWTH RESISTANCE OF POLYETHYLENE PIPE GRADES WITH CYCLIC CRACKED ROUND BAR (CRB) TEST IN CORRELATION TO STRAIN HARDENING (SH) TEST

摘要

Several test methods have been developed to determine slow crack growth (SCG) resistance of modern polyethylene (PE) pipe materials. Unfortunately, most of these test methods exceed practical time frames and take unfeasible time to reach brittle failure at standard test conditions. Therefore new acceleration methods for a reliable and quick material ranking are required. The Cyclic Cracked Round Bar (CRB) Test and the Strain Hardening (SH) Test are two of these recently developed standard test methods with a significant expediting of testing time. This study summarizes quite a few results of the Cyclic CRB test and compares them with results from Strain Hardening (SH) test to demonstrate the correlation between these two test methods and to highlight the advantages of the Cyclic CRB Test.