Investigations of the quadrature phase impact on the behavior of the Liu & Mahadevan’s criterion for fully reversed bending–torsion experiments

•Numerical computation of the Liu & Mahadevan’s criterion.•Fully reversed bending–torsion experiments are considered.•Analytic analysis for brittle steel materials for validating the numerical study.•Comparison of numerical study with experimental data provided by literature.•Singular behavior of the criterion for in-quadrature phase of stresses.

The present paper focuses on stress-based criterion of Liu & Mahadevan. A computation of this criterion from an implementation of a numerical procedure based on stress solutions leading to unit criterion is proposed. This approach is supported by an analytic analysis for brittle steel materials for validating the numerical study. A singular behavior of the criterion is observed for in-quadrature phase of stresses, when fully reversed bending–torsion experiments are considered. A comparison of results with some experimental data provided by literature is performed.