Fracture initiation at a sharp notch

Abstract

Recent theories of fracture initiation at stress concentrations have employed models in which plastic deformation is confined to infinitesimally thin regions coplanar with the defects, one of the main assumptions being that the defects are infinitely sharp. This paper describes an extension of these theories to the case of anti-plane strain deformation of a semi-infinite body containing a surface notch with an elliptical profile, and removes anomalies that arise when the earlier theories are applied to notches. The predictions are compared with those of the earlier theories and are applied in a brief discussion of some aspects of fracture at stress concentrations.