Effect of Confining Pressure on Stress Intensity Factors for Cracked Brazilian Disk

An analytical model, verified by the finite element method, is developed to study the effect of confining pressure on stress intensity factors for the cracked Brazilian disk. The closed-form expressions for stress intensity factors under both confining pressure and diametric forces are obtained based on the weight function method. The results show that the confining pressure has no effect on the mode II stress intensity factor; however, the mode I stress intensity factor decreases with the increase of confining pressure and the change may be above 100% for a large confining pressure. In addition, the effect of confining pressure on the loading condition of pure mode II crack is also investigated. It is shown that the critical loading angle for pure mode II crack decreases as the confining pressure increases. Depending on the magnitude of confining pressure, the failure problem of a disk may be no longer a pure fracture problem. These results have established the theoretical foundation to measure the fracture toughness of materials under confining pressure.