MIXED MODE BRITTLE FRACTURE IN A WHITE MARBLE-AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY USING SPECIMENS CUT FROM CIRCULAR SAMPLES

摘要

A series of mixed-mode fracture experiments was conducted on Ghorveh white marble using two different specimens cut from circular samples. Each specimen contained an edge crack and loaded under three point bending. It was demonstrated that the conventional strain energy density (SED) criterion overestimated the fracture strength of Ghorveh white marble. However, the generalized SED criterion which considers the first non-singular stress term as well as the singular terms could provide significantly better estimates for the fracture load under mixed mode loading.