Introduction to Fracture Mechanics

Introduction to Fracture Mechanics presents an introduction to the origins, formulation and application of fracture mechanics for the design, safe operation and life prediction in structural materials and components. It introduces and informs the reader how fracture mechanics works and how it is so different from other forms of analysis used to characterize mechanical properties. The book covers from the topics of the foundation and use of linear-elastic fracture mechanics, involving both K-based characterizing parameter and G-based energy approaches, to characterizing the fracture toughness of materials under plane-strain and non plane-strain conditions, the latter using the notion of crack-resistance or R-curves. It then proceeds with a description of the far more complex nonlinear-elastic fracture mechanics based on the use of the J-integral and the crack-tip opening displacement. These topics largely involve continuum mechanics descriptions of crack initiation, slow crack growth, eventual instability by overload fracture, and subcritical cracking, but are coupled with mechanistic interpretations of the fracture modes using simple micro-mechanics formulations. Presents how, for a given material, a fracture toughness value can be measured on a small laboratory sample and then used directly to predict the failure (by fracture, fatigue, creep, etc.) of a much larger structure in servicePresents the rudiments of fracture mechanics from the perspective of the philosophy underlying the few principles and the many assumptions that form the basis of the disciplineProvides the reader with a "working knowledge" of fracture mechanics, describing its potency for damage-tolerant design, for preventing failures through appropriate life-prediction strategies, and for quantitative failure analysis (fracture diagnostics), while simultaneously communicating a necessary understanding of the methodology to avoid the many "pitfalls" that seem to be implicit with its use