Fracture mechanical characterization of micro- and nano-filled polymers by a combined experimental and simulative procedure

With the development of micro- and nanotechnological products such as sensors, MEMS and NEMS and their broad application new reliability issues will arise. The authors present a combined experimental and simulative approach targeted on unsolved questions of size effects within newly developed nanomaterials and highly integrated systems. The experimental approach is based on in-situ SPM scans of the analyzed object carried out at different thermomechanical load states. With the application of digital image correlation techniques displacement fields with nanometer accuracy are derived. A simulative approaches is performed by homogenization which is the modeling of a representative volume of bulk material taking into account spatial distribution of filler particles. The results of the homogenization are input data for standard finite element codes. © 2004 IEEE.