Fracture toughness

Common card · No. 413990

In materials science, fracture toughness is the critical stress intensity factor of a sharp crack where propagation of the crack suddenly becomes rapid and unlimited. It is a material property that quantifies its ability to resist crack propagation and failure under applied stress. A component's thickness affects the constraint conditions at the tip of a crack with thin components having plane stress conditions, leading to ductile behavior and thick components having plane strain conditions, where the constraint increases, leading to brittle failure. Plane strain conditions give the lowest fracture toughness value which is a material property. The critical value of stress intensity factor in mode I loading measured under plane strain conditions is known as the plane strain fracture toughness, denoted K Ic {\displaystyle K_{\text{Ic}}} . When a test fails to meet the thickness and other test...

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