DEVELOPMENT OF RATIONAL DESIGN CRITERIA FOR BRITTLE MATERIALS.

Very brittle materials are finding increasing usage in critical engineering components. In this paper the development of rational design criteria for these materials are described. Three major topics are discussed. The statistical techniques which enable the correlation of experimental data, and the effects of size and stress gradient to be taken into account are described, and the development of these methods to cases of nonuniform stresses through a unit volume concept are assessed.