Fracture behavior of nuclear graphite under three-point bending tests

Three-point bending tests are performed on center-notched graphite beams to study the fracture properties of IG11 graphite. Electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) is used to measure the full-field deformation of the graphite beams. A clip gauge is used to measure the crack mouth opening displacement (CMOD) of the beams, which validates the ESPI measurements. In addition, finite element (FE) analysis is performed by using the ABAQUS...