Determination of Stress Intensity Factor for Cracked Brazilian Disc Using Weight Function

Abstract

To reduce stress concentration near the loading point, Brazilian test, normally used for the indirect determination of tensile strength for rock or concrete quasi-brittle materials, is usually subjected to uniformly distributed pressure over finite width (or arc) of the Brazilian disc. As an extension, the same geometry, in which a central notch is introduced in the symmetrical plane of applied forces, can be used to determine fracture toughness of the materials. For this purpose, accurate expression for stress intensity factor (SIF) for central cracked Brazilian disc should be provided first. To this end, weight function method is used in this paper where weight function for central cracked disc is available in general SIF handbooks. Meanwhile, the exact stress solution in the intact Brazilian disc subjected to uniformly distributed pressure is derived by use of numerical method. In the end, some finite element analysis is carried out using the program package ABAQUS on the Brazilian disc, and the comparison results regarding the SIF between the weight function method and numerical method prove the validity of the proposed method.