In-situ brittle fracture analysis of sharp V-notched components using digital image correlation

In this manuscript, an in-situ framework is presented for fracture load assessment of sharp notched components. First, some fracture experiments are conducted on the V-notched semi-circular bending (V-SCB) samples having various notch opening angles. Then, two different approaches are employed for evaluating the stress field in the vicinity of the notch, and the corresponding results are linked to the maximum tangential stress (MTS) criterion for estimating the fracture loads obtained from the tests. The first approach is to use the in-situ method of digital image correlation (DIC) and the second one is to simulate the specimen by utilizing the finite element (FE) technique. It is demonstrated that the framework presented in this paper for in-situ fracture prediction using the DIC method can provide very good estimations mainly because it takes account of real loading and boundary conditions in the notched specimen, while the predictions based on the FE simulations show rather large errors. Finally, a discussion on the reasons for the disagreement between the predictions of these two approaches is provided.