Fracture size effects and polycrystalline inhomogeneity

摘要

Fracture toughness testing is prone to exhibitvarious size effects that have to be understood in order toproperly interpret the result. It is shown that the size effectassociated with polycrystalline inhomogeneity is weak. Insteadpolycrystalline inhomogeneity induces statistical effectscontrolled by a small number of grains adjacent to the crack tip.