Brittle failurefailure of blunt V-shaped notch under mode I loading

In the previous paper of the authors (Chen and Fan, 2019), the fracture evaluation of the U-shaped notches, which refer specifically to the V-shaped notches with the notch opening angle gamma = 0, has been investigated in details. In the present study, the evaluation technique of fracture loads for blunt V-shaped notches is investigated by using the mean stress criterion and the Filippi's stress equation. It is found that the conclusions obtained in the previous study for the U-shaped notches with gamma = 0 can also apply to the V-shaped notches with gamma not equal 0. Under certain geometric conditions the fracture loads of blunt V-shaped notches can be evaluated not only by the generalized notch stress intensity factor K-IC(V,R), but also by the maximum stress at the notch root sigma(maxC). Both the values of K-IC(V,R)/K-IC and sigma(maxC)/sigma(C) can be expressed by a function of rho/(K-IC/sigma(C))(2). The geometric conditions can be estimated from the condition that the mean stress over the control region in the actual specimens can be approximately evaluated by Filippi's stress equation.