Abstract
Fracture surface of amorphous polymer such as epoxy resin, which is remained by stable growth of crack from a sharp and smooth initial crack under viscoelastic environment of mechanical behaviors, is at a glance covered with featureless fine river-stream pattern. The energy absorption by a crack accompanied by this type of fracture surface is so low that the most dangerous circumstances arise occasionally in actual situation in the industrial design. Since the current type of fractography techniques can not reveal the features of structure and morphology of fracture surface of this type in detail, a computer-aided fractgraphy technique that can be applicable to extremely smooth fracture surface of amorphous polymer has to be newly developed. At first, the authors apply several types of texture analysis to the case of epoxy resin, such as the analyses of frequency, run length, and the extrema, then discuss on the usefulness of the method for understanding the feature of disperse pattern of fracture surface image. Also, quantitative analysis is examined on fracture surfaces produced by a steady crack growth.
