Surface crack in tension or in bending – A reassessment of the Newman and Raju formula in respect to fracture toughness measurements in brittle materials

The Newman and Raju formula for the stress intensity factor of a semi-elliptical surface crack loaded in uniaxial tension or in bending has been developed about 30 years ago using an FE-analysis for several geometric parameters and fitting an empirical equation to the data points. The Poisson's ratio analyzed was 0.3. In this paper a reassessment of the Newman and Raju formula is made, where all relevant geometric parameters of crack and...