Brittle fracture analysis of blunt V-notches under compression

Brittle fracture was investigated both experimentally and theoretically in blunt V-notches under compression. A new test specimen, called flattened V-notched semi-disk (FVSD) specimen, was suggested for conducting fracture tests on PMMA under compression for different notch angles and various notch radii with the aim to measure experimentally the compressive notch fracture toughness. The experimental results were theoretically estimated by means of two stress-based brittle fracture criteria, namely the point-stress (PS) and the mean-stress (MS) criteria. With total accuracies of 91% and 90% for the PS and the MS criteria, respectively; it was found that both the criteria provide very good predictions to the experimental results.