Brittle fracture prediction of key-hole notched specimens by means of J-integral expression

Abstract

The main goal of the present research is to check if J-integral criterion is capable of predicting the onset of brittle fracture in key-hole notched isostatic poly-granular graphite plates. In this way, this article provides the prediction of fracture loads in several key-hole notched rectangular graphite specimens with five different notch tip radii subjected to pure mode I loading condition, which has been previously reported in the literature by Lazzarin et al. (2013). The fracture load predictions for five dimensional cases were obtained through the J-integral calculations. It is revealed that the J-integral criterion is capable of predicting well the fracture loads of graphite key-hole notched specimens, independent of the size of key-hole notch.