EVALUATION OF ELASTIC FRACTURE-MECHANICS PARAMETERS FOR BEND SPECIMENS

Existing solutions for stress intensity factor and crack mouth opening displacement of three-point bend specimens are shown to overestimate these quantities for shallow cracks by up to +/-4.5 percent, because they do not account for the disturbance of the bending stress distribution by the concentrated force at the loading point. This error is far larger than the accuracy claimed by these solutions (0.2 to 0.5 percent). New expressions are therefore developed for stress intensity, crack mouth opening displacement and crack mouth open angle of single edge notched bend specimens loaded in three-point bending. As a reference, and to show the accuracy of the solutions, also the pure bending situation is treated. Rigorously derived asymptotic solutions are used for the shallow and deep crack limits, in order to prescribe both the proper limit values and gradients to the interpolation functions, of which the intermediate values are derived from refined finite element analyses. The crack mouth opening angle solutions are primarily intended to facilitate crack mouth opening measurement at other locations then the specimen surface, i.e. at an offset from the specimen surface as is the case when removable knife edges are applied. No solutions of the crack mouth opening angle of three-point bend specimens were available until now. For use with unloading compliance crack length measurement, also an inverse crack mouth opening relation is developed. This also includes crack mouth opening measurement at an offset from the specimen surface, which is lacking in presently available expressions of this kind.