Brittle-material failures as indicators of stress-concentration factors

The objective of this paper is the study of the possibility of using the amount of load producing failure in brittle-material models to compute stress-concentration factors. Several correlations between brittle-failure loads and stress-concentration factors were investigated.For their tests, the authors developed a plaster-silica mortar and studied the influence of twelve variables on its ultimate tensile strength. Included were physical and processing variables, and loading and stress conditions.Some applications of the method are shown.