16. Design of a Pre-crack Device for Environmental Stress Cracking (ESC) Studies

In this research, a pre-crack device was successfully fabricated and improved in terms of the design concept, technology, and safety features. These improvements transform this manually operated device into a semi-autonomous one. A pre-crack device is developed to maintain the uniformity of the natural crack depth. The device consists of two vertical aluminium profiles, stepper motor, lead screw, Arduino microcontroller, limit switch, display panel, and joystick switch lever. The height of the loaded container can be controlled by an Arduino microcontroller system and monitored through the display panel. The simulation analysis was performed on the fixture by analysing the maximum value of stress, strain, and displacement with the following results of 10,670 MPa, 3.630 × 10^–6, and 3.148 × 10^–5 mm, respectively. According to the ultimate principal stress and maximum distortion theories, the design is acceptable with a maximum stress of 10,670 MPa. As a result, it can be concluded that this newly constructed device can be utilised to pre-crack the sample while maintaining the natural crack depth within accepted ranges.