| Summary: | Polyacrylamide (PAAm) hydrogel is viewed as a material with immense research
potential and market value. PAAm hydrogel has been used in multiple applications
that ranges from medicinal field, water and oil treatment, and agriculture purposes.
More importantly, it was also nominated as the model material to conduct fracture
studies on hydrogel. In this report, dynamic fracture was the mode of fracture selected
for the study. While previous studies may have conducted various analysis on dynamic
fracture, they have yet to base the research on a material of such significance. Thus,
this project would focus on investigating the dynamic fracture properties of PAAm
hydrogel and exploring, the relationship between the crack tip velocity and the
different pre-stretched conditions. In addition, a proposed crack tip velocity tracking
algorithm, using MATLAB image processing toolbox, will be developed to facilitate
the project analysis.
PAAm hydrogel will undergo tensile loading under dynamic fracture conditions for
three sets of pre-stretch configurations. As mentioned, the proposed algorithm will be
used to analyse the video recordings of each experimental sets. The algorithm adopted
an image processing workflow that comprises of four main stages namely (i) image
acquisition (ii) image pre-processing (iii) crack detection, (iv) algorithm calculation.
Upon analysing the results with the algorithm, an apparent proportional relationship
between the average crack tip velocity and pre-stretched configuration was obtained.
Various other key observations were also produced. These pioneer dynamic fracture
insights of PAAm hydrogel would provide diverse research opportunities for future
developments of its applications.
|
|---|