Brittle fracture of nickel by dynamic indentation

Cracks of up to 40 μm which are either transgranular cleavage or very low energy “ductile” cracks have been introduced into large-grained fcc Ni. The mechanism for introducing this brittle fracture was dynamic indentation. Optical and scanning electron microscopy together with use of selected area channeling patterns were used to confirm that the fracture process is transgranular. The results qualitatively support the hypothesis that dynamic cracks originating in a brittle film can propagate relatively large distances into a ductile face-centered-cubic substrate by a rapid, low energy process.