Equation 14 · Why Materials Fail: Fracture, Flaws and the Inspection Interval
What does this equation mean?
Read the formula alongside the article passage below. Each part has a deeper page with its role in the equation, the supporting passage and nearby citations.
the dimensionless factor capturing geometry and loading. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.
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How to interpret it
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What the article says around this equation
Here is the applied stress, a the crack size, and Y a dimensionless factor capturing geometry and loading. The claim embedded in this expression is a similitude claim: two cracked bodies of different shape and size, loaded differently, have the same crack-tip conditions if they have the same K . Fracture then occurs when K reaches a material-specific critical value, the plane-strain fracture toughness .
For background, read the article’s source list.
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