Abstract
Two closed-form expressions were developed in this research to estimate the mode I apparent notch fracture toughness of brittle materials weakened by key-hole notches based on the well-established brittle fracture criteria, namely, the point stress and the mean stress. The theoretical models were verified using the experimental results reported in open literature dealing with tensile fracture in rectangular isostatic graphite plates containing central key-hole notches of various notch tip radii. A very good agreement was found to exist between the predictions of both the models and the experimental results. The results showed that while the accuracy of each model was different for various notch tip radii, total accuracies of the two models were almost equal (both about 93%) demonstrating their effectiveness. Using such expressions, it is expected that one can simply estimate the load-carrying capacity of brittle and quasi-brittle components weakened by key-hole notches under mode I loading.
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