Fracture analysis of V-notched components – Effects of first non-singular stress term

The effect of the first non-singular stress term on the fracture behavior of notched structures was investigated under symmetric geometry and loading conditions. According to the Williams series expansion, for a large domain of notch angles the non-singular stress terms of sharp notches are functions of complex eigenvalues and their corresponding complex coefficients. Hence, a new representation of stress field near the notch tip was developed in which the higher order terms are expressed as several explicit functions of real and imaginary parts of both the complex eigenvalues and their complex coefficients. A critical stress criterion was then applied to the new stress formulations to assess the influence of the first non-singular stress term on the apparent fracture toughness. Several finite element analyses were also performed on two laboratory specimens in order to show the effects of first non-singular term on the near field stress distribution of notched specimens. The results demonstrated that neglecting the first non-singular stress term could lead to significant errors in predicting the apparent fracture toughness of notched components.