Crack arrest by internal compressive stress field induced by external tensile loading

In brittle materials such as concrete and ceramics, fibre reinforcement has been widely accepted as an effective way to improve their toughness and strength. Significant increases in toughness, 2 to 3 order or magnitudes higher than that of the plain matrix, have been achieved [1–3]. Such large improvements are generally associated with fibre debonding, fibre plastic deformation, and fibre pull-out. On the other hand, strength enhancement is much less impressive when low to moderate fibre contents are used. A marginal effect of fibres on increased strength is by impeding crack propagation [4, 5]. For continuous aligned fibre composites, Aveston et al. [6] have derived an explicit equation relating composite first cracking strength (ómu, a