Thermal fatigue assessment of components made with particulate polymer composites

Abstract

Many appliance materials are made of PMMA/Si acrylic casting dispersion. In these situations, failure can occur by thermal fatigue induced by severe temperature variations such as alternating flows of cold and hot water. This paper is concerned with the numerical analysis of the thermal stresses in three composites with different volume fractions of filler and particle size. Their trade marks are Asterite, Amatis and Ultra-quartz. Cosmos/M finite element method software was used to study the influence of the cold and hot water temperatures as well as the time of interruption of water flow in the transition between hot and cold water on thermal stresses. Residual stresses were measured and superimposed to thermal stress in fatigue analysis. Typical defects in the corner of holes produced by drilling were predicted using experimental fatigue lives and da/dN curves. Based on predicted defects thermal fatigue assessment of commercially available sinks made with the three materials mentioned earlier was done by taking into account the influence of both cyclic thermal and static residual stresses induced by the manufacturing process.