Numerical simulation of a fracture test for brittle disordered materials

摘要

For the characterisation of brittle disordered materials like building materials and refractories fracture mechanicalparameters are of great importance.For this purpose in the past a wedge splitting test according to Tschegg [1] hasestablished as a feasible testing method.This test yields a specific fracture energy Gf and a nominal notch tensilestrength σNT.The testing procedure shows several advantages for materials with large heterogeneities.Theinvestigation shown here has the objective to improve the evaluation of the wedge splitting test: By numericalsimulations a procedure was developed to derive the tensile strength, the Young′s modulus and a corrected specificfracture energy from the test results.These values may e.g.be applied to simulate the mechanical behaviour ofrefractory linings by the Finite Element Method.The evaluation procedure shown here necessitates no furthersimulation, only a system of three nonlinear equations has to be solved.