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Introduction to Fracture
Mechanics

Historical Background
• Prior to the Industrial Revolution (before 19th century),
the primary construction materials were: timber, brick,
and mortar.
• Brick and mortar (relatively brittle) were only used for
large structures, and they were usually designed to be
loaded in compression.
• Compression loaded structures were stable. Some, in
fact, have lasted for many centuries. E.g., pyramids in
Egypt.
• With the Industrial Revolution (brought by the mass
production of iron and steel), ductile construction
materials removed the earlier restrictions on design.
• It became feasible to build structures that carried
tensile stresses.
• However, this change from compression-loaded
structures to tensile-loaded brought problems.

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Fig.1: Schematic of Roman bridge design-made of bricks and mortar and loaded in compression. (Source: [1])

Fig. 2:The Tower Bridge in London, completed in 1894, made using tension-loaded steel support girders. (Source: [1])

Historical Background…
• Occasionally, a steel structure would fail
unexpectedly at stresses well below the anticipated
tensile strength.
• For example: the rupture of a molasses tank in
Bostan (Great Molasses Flood, also known as
the Boston Molasses Disaster) in January 1919
caused spilling of 2.3 million US gal (8,700 m3) of
molasses with a speed of 56 km/h, resulting in 21
deaths, 150 injuries, several drowned horses,
massive property damage.
• Designers typically applied FOS of 10 or more to
avoid these seemingly random failures.

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Historical Background…
• The field of fracture mechanics was barely existed prior
to World War II (1939 to 1945).
• Cracks were thought to be small, insignificant nuisances
that could never be a threat to large structures like
ships and aircraft.
• But during the war, and for a short time afterward,
many ships and aircraft failed in sudden, seemingly
inexplicable ways.
• It was eventually determined that the failures were in
fact caused by cracks in these metal structures.

Big Disasters

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1940s-Liberty Ships
• The mechanics of fracture progressed well after WW II in 1940s,
primarily because of what happened to Liberty ships.
• To meet high demands of war, US started manufacturing of cargo
ships with all-welded hull, called Liberty ships, as opposed to the
riveted constructed traditional ships.
• But in a very short span of time, approximately 400 liberty ships,
out of 2700, experienced sudden, unexpected brittle fractures
and hence, were failed in the cold temperatures of the North
Atlantic Ocean. In fact, many of them were broken into two
pieces.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Schenectady

1940s-Liberty Ships…
• However, the ships made by riveting plates did not display such
failures. Because the crack once nucleated and grew into a plate
would not grow into another plate.
• But, in a welded structure, being a large single continuous part,
the crack, once nucleated and becomes critical, will run through
the entire hull of the ship.

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1950s - de Havilland Comet

• The UK's de Havilland Comet is the aviation
industry's most famous case of crack-related
aircraft failure.
• Three fatal Comet-1 crashes over a 12 month
period during 1953 and 1954 led to the
grounding of the entire Comet fleet.
• The crashes were found to be caused by cracks
growing from corners of the square fuselage
windows.
• The square corners served as stress risers,
accelerating crack formation and growth in a
fuselage stressed by pressurization (low outside
pressure and high inside pressure) during high
altitude flight causing fuselage under high tensile
stresses.
Source:
• By the time the redesigned Comet was back in https://aerospaceengineeringblog.com/dehavilland-
service in 1958, aviation supremacy had moved comet-crash/
from the UK to America as the Boeing 707 and
Douglas DC-8 captured the public's attention.

1950s - de Havilland Comet…

Source: https://aviation-safety.net/photos/displayphoto.php?id=19540110-1&vnr=6&kind=c

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1988 - Aloha Airlines Flight 243

• On April 28, 1988, Aloha Airlines Flight 243 (a Boeing 737)
suffered extensive damage following an in-flight explosive
decompression at 24,000 feet.
• The plane had only accumulated 35,496 flight hours at the time
of the accident. However, it had 89,680 flight cycles (take-offs
and landings) during that time, which severely cycled the
fuselage due to pressurization.
• The subsequent US NTSB (US National Transportation Safety
Board) investigation determined that failure was the result of
multisite fatigue cracking of the skin panel adjacent to rivet holes
at a lap joint.
• The situation was compounded by corrosion, countersunk
fastener holes forming knife edges in the skin, and finally,
deficient inspection and maintenance programs on part of the
operator.

1988 - Aloha Airlines Flight 243…

The fuselage of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 after exploding while in flight on April 28, 1988
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243#/media/File:Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243_fuselage.png)

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Beginning of Fracture Mechanics

• With the development of large ships made of
welded plates and high capacity jet airplanes, new
problems arose.
• The predominant questions asked were: What
causes failure? Can we contain the failure?
• These questions caused the beginning of the
development of a new discipline of engineering,
called ‘Fracture Mechanics’

Early Fracture Research

• Experiments by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
provided first time some clues as to the root cause of
failure when he found that the strength varied
inversely with length of iron wire. Long wire were
expected to possess many cracks.
• A quantitative connection between the fracture stress
and crack size (in glass specimens only) came from
the work of Griffith in 1920, and he developed a right
ideas of energy requirements for the growth of a
crack.
• However, Griffith was not able to invent a convenient
parameter to predict the load on a component that
would cause the growth of a crack.

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Early Fracture Research…

• Subsequent efforts to apply the Griffith model to
metals were unsuccessful. Because the Griffith
approach only applies to ideally brittle solids.
• A modification of Griffith model that made it
applicable to metals did not come until 1948.

Post-War Fracture Research

• For all practical purposes, modern fracture mechanics
was born in 1948 when George Irwin
formulated fracture mechanics by devising workable
parameters like stress intensity factor and
energy release rate.
• Irwin’s development was mainly for brittle or less
ductile materials. But, the analysis was conservative
for most engineering materials which are generally
ductile.
• Around 1960, the fundamentals of linear elastic
fracture mechanics (LEFM) were fairly well
established, and researchers turned their attention to
crack tip plasticity.

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Post-War Fracture Research…

• LEFM ceases to be valid when significant plastic
deformation precedes failure.
• Thereafter, other parameters, like Crack Tip Opening
displacement (CTOD) by Wells in 1961 and J-Integral
(can be viewed as a nonlinear stress intensity
parameter as well as energy release rate) by Rice in
1968, were developed to account for the large plastic
zone at the crack-tip in ductile materials.
• In 1971, Begely and Landes referred the Rice’s article
to characterize fracture toughness of nuclear
pressure vessel steels with the J integral and that let
to a standard procedure for J testing of metals.

Post-War Fracture Research…

• In an effort to apply the concepts of fracture mechanics to
design through a mathematical relationship between
toughness, stress and flaw size, Shih and Hutchinson
provided the theoretical framework that was published
(by Electric Power Research Institute, EPRI) in the form of
a fracture design handbook.
• In 1981, Shih demonstrated a relationship between the J
integral and CTOD, implying that both parameters are
equally valid for characterizing fracture.
• The J-based material testing and structural design
approaches developed in the U.S and the British CTOD
methodology have begun to merge, with positive aspects
of each approach combined to yield improved analyses.

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Post-War Fracture Research…

• Both parameters are currently applied throughout the
world to a range of materials.
• In addition, the theoretical foundation of dynamic
fracture mechanics was also developed in the period
between 1960 and 1980.

Recent Trends in Fracture Research

• The field of FM has matured in recent years. Current
research tends to result in incremental advances rather
than major breakthroughs/gains.
• More sophisticated models for material behaviour (i.e.,
time-dependent nonlinear material behaviour, namely,
visco-plasticity and visco-elasticity) are being incorporated
in FM analysis.
• The former is motivated by the need for tough, creep-
resistant high temperature materials, while the latter
reflects the increasing proportion of plastics in structural
applications.
• FM has also been applied in the characterization of
composite materials.
• Recent research is also focussed on the development of
microstructural models for fracture and models to relate
local and global fracture behaviour of materials.

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Fracture Mechanics Approach to Design

(a) the strength of materials approach

(Source: [1])

(b) the fracture mechanics approach

• As shown, FM approach has three important variables, rather than

two in SOM approach.
• There are two alternative approaches to fracture analysis:
o The energy criterion, and
o The stress intensity approach.
• These approaches are equivalent in certain circumstances.

The Energy Criterion

• The energy approach (first proposed by Griffith, but the present
form is due to Irwin) states that the crack extension (i.e., fracture)
occurs when the energy available for crack growth is sufficient to
overcome resistance of the material.
• The material resistance may include the surface energy, plastic
work, or other type of energy dissipation associated with a
propagating crack.
• As per the energy criterion, fracture occurs when the energy
release rate (ERR), G (defined as the rate of change in potential
energy with crack area for a linear elastic material) reaches the
critical energy release rate (Gc), which is a measure of fracture
toughness.
• For an infinite plate with an inside crack and subjected to a
remote tensile load, the energy release rate is given by:

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The Energy Criterion…

• At fracture, when G = Gc, the above equation describe the critical
combinations of stress and crack size for failure and we have:

• The energy release rate G is the driving force for fracture, while
fracture toughness Gc is the material’s resistance to fracture.

The Stress Intensity Approach

• As shown, each stress component is
proportional to a single constant, KI. This
constant is called the stress intensity factor
(SIF).
• KI completely characterizes the crack tip
conditions (e.g., stress distribution) in a linear
elastic material.
Stresses near the tip of a crack in an elastic material (Source: [1])
• For the plate shown in the figure, the SIF is
given by:
• At failure: KI = KIC.
• Here, KI is the driving force for fracture and KIC
is a measure of material resistance.
• Comparing the above relation for SIF with the
one for ERR, we get (also holds for KIC and GC):

• Thus, the two approaches to FM are

essentially equivalent for linear elastic
materials.

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Time –Dependent Crack Growth and Damage

Tolerance
• FM plays a role in life prediction of components that are subjected to time-
dependent crack growth mechanisms such as fatigue or stress corrosion
cracking.
• The rate of cracking can be correlated with FM parameters such as the stress
intensity factor, and the critical crack size for failure can be computed if the
applied stress and fracture toughness are known.
• For example, the fatigue crack growth rate in metals is given by the following
empirical relationship:
• Damage tolerance entails allowing subcritical flaws to remain in a structure.
Repairing flawed material or scrapping a flawed structure is expensive and is
often unnecessary. Fracture mechanics provides a rational basis for establishing
flaw tolerance limits.
Time required for the flaw to grow
from its initial size to the
maximum allowable size
Max. allowable flaw size
(computed by applying safety
factor to the critical crack size)

Initial crack size (from NDE)

(Source: [1])

Effect of Material Properties on Fracture

(i.e., Under quasi-static conditions)

Non-linear
(i.e., Under quasi-static conditions)
fracture
Mechanics

Tree of Fracture Mechanics (Source: [1])

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Effect of Material Properties on Fracture…

Effect of fracture toughness on the governing failure mechanism. (Source: [1])

References
1. T. L. Anderson. Fracture Mechanics: Fundamentals
and Applications, Third Edition, CRC Press, 2005.
2. Prashant Kumar. Elements of Fracture Mechanics,
McGraw Hill Education (India) Private Limited,
2009.
3. Broek, D.. Elementary Engineering Fracture
Mechanics, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague,
1982.

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Additional Notes:
• Limit load is the maximum load that a structure can
safely carry. It's the load at which the structure is in a
state of incipient plastic collapse. As the load on the
structure increases, the displacements increases
linearly in the elastic range until the load attains the
yield value. Beyond this, the load-displacement
response becomes non-linear and the plastic or
irreversible part of the displacement increases steadily
with the applied load. Plasticity spreads throughout the
solid and at the limit load, the plastic zone becomes
very large and the displacements become unbounded
and the component is said to have collapsed.

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