A New Constraint-Based Fracture Prediction Methodology for Ductile Materials Containing Surface Cracks

This thesis discusses the analysis of surface cracked configurations in order to develop a fracture prediction criterion suitable for ductile materials. A similar criteria has been successfully developed for brittle materials. However, the criteria has not been applied to ductile materials. Finite element analysis results are presented as well as laboratory test data. The validity of the proposed criterion is addressed and future work is proposed