Measure of a material's resistance to crack propagation.
A measure of the damage tolerance of a material containing initial flaws or cracks.
critical value of the stress intensity factor for which crack extensions occurs.
A generic term for measures of resistance to extension of a crack. The term is sometimes restricted to results of fracture mechanics tests, which are directly applicable in fracture control. However, the term commonly includes results from simple tests of notched or precracked specimens not based on fracture mechanics analysis. Results from test of the latter type are often useful for fracture control, based on either service experience or empirical correlations with fracture mechanics tests. See also stress-intensity factor.
A measure of the resistance to crack propagation in a material, formally related to the applied stress and crack size.
In materials science, fracture toughness is a property which describes the ability of a material containing a crack to resist fracture, and is one of the most important properties of any material for virtually all design applications. It is denoted KIc and has the units of MPa\sqrt{m}. Fracture toughness is a quantitative way of expressing a material's resistance to brittle fracture when a crack is present.
