A new direction in computational fracture mechanics in materials science: Will the combination of probabilistic and fractal fracture mechanics become mainstream?

► Continuum mechanics based approximation is too often unsatisfactory for real material's problems. ► Deterministic analyses often produce inconclusive, or conflicting, in estimating the fatigue life of a component. ► Cracks are described better with fractal mathematics than with Euclidean mathematics. ► Possibility of the applications of probabilistic and fractal fracture mechanics is predicted.