Fracture Behavior of Surface-Cracked Tension Elements

The crack length dimension is used as the principal measure of surface flaw severity to model fracture behavior in the elastic-plastic range of material behavior. Using the results of previous observations, it is shown that a single, continuous stress-crack length curve can be created for flaw shape ratios, a/2c, between 0.25 and 0.50, which are those most commonly encountered in structural service. The technique is verified by graphical displays of data on steel and titanium materials from several investigators.