Development of a fracture fatigue test for lifetime quantification of footwear outsoles

Development of a fracture fatigue test for lifetime quantification of footwear outsoles: a preliminary application to self-healing polymers

Bauer, Q.

van der Helm, F.C.T. (mentor)

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

Biomechanical Engineering

BioMechanical Design

2016-12-15

Previous research showed fracture failure in the outsole of sports footwear. There was no method available for the quantification of the material behavior in with this failure mechanism. Therefor the goal of this research was to develop a mechanical test method for quantification of fatigue fracture behavior of a material when a crack is present. One way of improving the lifetime of a shoe is with the use of self-healing material. Therefore a preliminary test has been done with a self-healing material. A new developed fracture fatigue test is designed with the help of a fracture mechanical J-integral test and an unconventional method for finding the point of crack initiation. Instead of using CTOD for finding crack initiation a new proposed r-squared-method is used. The results from the single fracture tests are used as inputs for the fatigue test. From the J-integral test the r-squared-method is validated with a CTOD analysis. Visual comparison fracture surfaces showed that the fatigue test gives a similar failure mechanism as found in the shoes. The test not only showed to represent the failure mechanism but also resulted in quantifiable results. It was possible to make lifetime predictions of the materials and the first preliminary test on a self-healing material showed promising results for future research.

sports engineering
j-test
fracture mechanics
fatigue
outsole
self-healing

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:844e9011-b89f-4f48-be7c-67177012c834

2021-12-15

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2016 Bauer, Q.